^WOFPRIW^ 


B  945  .S63  F56  1877 
Shields,  Charles  W.  1825- 

1904. 
The  final  philosophy 


r^h"- 


THE 


FINAL 

PHILOSOPHY 


SYSTEM  OF  PERFECTIBLE  KNOWLEDGE 

ISSUING  FROM  THE  HARMONY  OF 

SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 


CHARLES  WOODRUFF  SHIELDS,  D.D. 

Professor  in  Prinxeton  College. 
Member  of  the  American  Philosophical  Society. 


NEW  YORK: 
SCRIBNER,  ARMSTRONG  S:  CO. 

1S77. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1877,  by 

SCRIBNER,  ARMSTRONG  &  CO. 
In  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress,  at  Washington. 


GRANT,  FAIRES  S  liODGERS, 

£lertrol!ypers  and  Printers, 

Philadelphia. 


THIS  -WORK 

IS   LASTINGLY  ASSOCIATED 

IN   THE  MINP   OF  THE  AUTHOR 

WITH  THE  SUSTAINING  COURAGE  AND   FAITH 

OF   HIS   WIFE, 

ELIZABETH    KANE, 

IN  WHOM  SHONE 

WITH   WOMANLY  GRACE  AND  NOBLEST  CULTURE 

ALL  THAT  MADE  THE  NAME  OF     ■ 

HER   HEROIC  BROTHER 

ILLUSTRIOUS. 


u  /IS  these  gTcat  things  are  not  at  our  disposal,  ive  here,  at  the  entrance 
JiJ.  of  our  work,  with  the  utmost  fervmcy  and  humility,  put  forth  our 
p  ravers  to  God,  that  refnemberitig  the  miseries  of  mankind  and  the  pilgrimage 
of  this  life,  where  we  pass  but  few  days  and  sorrowful,  He  would  vouchsafe 
through  our  hands,  and  the  hands  of  others,  to  whom  He  has  given  the  like 
mind,  to  relieve  the  human  race  by  a  new  act  of  His  bounty.  We  likewise 
beseech  Hun,  that  zvhat  is  human  may  not  clash  with  what  is  divine;  and 
that  when  the  ways  of  the  senses  are  opened,  and  a  greater  nattiral  light  set 
up  tn  the  mind,  nothing  of  incredulity  and  blindness  toivards  divine  mys- 
teries may  arise  ;  but  rather  that  the  understanding,  now  cleared  up,  and 
purged  of  all  vanity  and  superstition,  may  remain  entirely  subject  to  the  di- 
vine oracles,  and  yield  to  faith  the  things  that  are  faith's  :  and  lastly,  that 
expelling  the  poisonous  knowledge  infused  by  the  serpent,  which  puffs  up  and 
swells  the  human  mind,  we  may  neither  be  wise  above  measure  nor  go  be- 
yond the  bounds  (f  sobriety,  but  pursue  the  truth  in  charity." 

Bacua :  Instauratio  Magn 


PREFACE. 


In  the  present  age  there  has  been  a  seeming  conflict  be- 
tween science  and  reHgion  ;  but  their  essential  harmony  may 
still  be  sought  upon  philosophical  principles,  and  as  itself 
affording  the  one  last  philosophy  or  theory  and  art  of  perfect 
knowledge. 

With  this  object  in  view,  the  author,  in  the  year  1861,  issued 
a  brief  essay  entitled  PJiilosopliia  Ultima,  together  with  a  cor- 
responding scheme  of  academic  studies  ;  and  in  pursuance  of 
that  scheme,  in  the  year  1865,  a  chair  of  instruction  was 
secured  in  the  College  of  New  Jersey,  through  the  generous 
and  intelligent  sympathy  of  some  friends  in  Philadelphia,  of 
whom  should  here  be  named  the  late  Rev.  Doctor  William  AI. 
Engles,  Mr.  George  W.  Childs,  Mr.  Anthony  J.  Drexel,  and 
the  Hon.  Furman  Shcppard. 

The  present  volume  may  be  regarded  as  the  first-fruits  of 
an  educational  experiment  thus  begun,  and  for  a  time  success- 
fully pursued.  But  it  also  contains  philosophical  opinions  and 
doctrines  .which  are   of  more  c^cneral   interest,  and   it   may. 


vi  Preface. 

therefore,  be  judged  upon  its  own  merits  by  the  wider  pubhc 
to  which  it  is  now  offered. 

In  the  closing  chapter  will  be  found  so  much  of  the  original 
essay  as  still  remains  to  be  expanded  ;  while  the  completion 
of  the  final  philosophy  itself,  it  need  scarcely  be  said,  can  only 
be  the  work  of  many  minds  through  coming  generations. 

October,  iSyy. 


CONTENTS. 


INTRODUCTION. 

THE   ACADEMIC   STUDY   OF  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE,   '. 


PART    I. 

THE    PHILOSOPHICAL    PARTIES  AS    TO    THE    RELATIONS 
BETWEEN  SCIENCE   AND   RELIGION. 

CHAPTER    I. 

EARLY  CONFLICTS  AND  ALLIANCES  BETWEEN  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION,  i 
OR    THE    HISTORICAL    CAUSES  OF  THEIR  PRESENT  DISTURBED  RE- 
LATIONS   27-51 

CHAPTER    n. 

MODERN  ANTAGONISM  BETWEEN  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION,  OR  THE 
BATTLES  OF  INFIDELS  AND  APOLOGISTS  IN  EACH  OF  THE 
SCIENCES,  IN  PHILOSOPHY  AND  IN  CIVILIZATION 52-94 

CHAPTER    HI. 

MODERN  INDIFFERENTISM  BETWEEN  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION,  OR  THE 
TRUCES  OF  SCIOLISTS  AND  DOGMATISTS  IN  THE  SCIENCES,  IN 
PHILOSOPHY   AND   IN   CIVILIZATION 95-319 

CHAPTER    IV. 

MODERN  ECLECTICISM  BETWEEN  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION,  OR  THE 
EXPLOITS  OF  RELIGIOUS  ECLECTICS  IN  THE  SCIENCES,  IN  PHIL- 
OSOPHY  AND    IN   CIVILIZATION 32O-398 

vii 


viii  Contents. 

PAGI 

CHAPTER    V. 

MODERN  SCEPTICISM  BETWEEN  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION,  OR  THE 
SURRENDERS  OF  RELIGIOUS  SCEPTICS  IN  THE  SCIENCES,  IN 
PHILOSOPHY   AND    IN    CIVILIZATION 399-43^ 


PART    II. 

THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  THEORY  OF  THE  HARMONY  OF  SCIENCE 
AND  RELIGION. 

CHAPTER    I. 

THE   UMPIRAGE    OF    PHILOSOPHY    BETWEEN    SCIENCE  AND   RELIGION      435-474 

CHAPTER    n. 

THE  POSITIVE   PHILOSOPHY,    OR   THEORY   OF  NESCIENCE  AS  IGNORING 

REVELATION, 475-502 

CHAPTER    HI. 

THE  ABSOLUTE  PHILOSOPHY,  OR  THEORY  OF  OMNISCIENCE   AS   SUPER- 
SEDING  REVELATION 503-533 

CHAPTER    IV. 

THE   FINAL    PHILOSOPHY,    OR    THEORY  OF   PERFECTIBLE  SCIENCE  AS 

CONCURRING  WITH   REVELATION,      .  .  .  .   •        .  .  .      S34-56l 

CHAPTER    V. 

PHILOSOPHIA  ULTIMA  :    PROJECT   OF   THE   PERFECTED   SCIENCES   AND 

ARTS, 562-588 

INDEXES. 

ANALYTICAL    INDEX   OF    SUBJECTS, 589-600 

ALPHABETICAL   INDEX   OF   AUTHORS, 60I-609 


INTRODUCTION. 


ACADEMIC  STUDY  OF  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE. 


INTRODUCTION. 


In  the  treatment  of  a  vast  theme,  it  will  be  necessary  to 
sacrifice  details  for  the  sake  of  principles.  If  we  would  rise 
to  general  views,  we  must  forego  many  a  special  inquiry 
which  might  please  the  fancy  of  the  moment,  and  be  content 
oftentimes  with  truths  which  can  have  no  other  charm  than 
their  own  simple  sublimity ;  as  the  traveller,  in  order  to  gain 
a  panoramic  view  of  the  whole  country,  will  leave  behind 
him  its  pleasant  lowlands  and  picturesque  villages,  and  climb 
to  some  lonely  and  rugged  summit,  from  whence  can  be  de- 
scried nought  but  the  grand  outlines  of  earth  and  sea  and  sky 
in  the  naked  majesty  of  nature. 

And,  as  a  preliminary  duty,  we  shall  need  to  sketch  the 
region  before  us.  Indeed,  it  would  seem  but  right  and  be- 
coming that  the  first  public  utterances  from  this  new  chair 
should  explain  and  commend  it.  Hitherto,  it  can  scarcely  be 
said  to  have  acquired  a  fitting  name  or  province  in  the  acade- 
mic domain.  Both  teacher  and  student  are  somewhat  like 
voyagers  to  new  lands,  who  must  make  their  map  as  they 
sail.  Let  it,  therefore,  be  the  object  of  the  first  lecture  to  de- 
fine the  limits  of  our  study,  to  glance  at  its  main  features  and 
to  seize  a  foretaste  of  its  advantages  aiid  pleasures. 

What  is  proposed  in  this  whole  department  is  simply  to 
blend  more  harmoniously  together  those  two  general  bodies 
of  learning,  the  scientific  and  the  religious,  Avhich  were  once 
so  compactly  joined  in  Christian  philosophy  and  scholastic 
culture,  but  have  since  been  slowly  falling  apart,  in  jarring 
fragments,  as  one  science  after  another  has  conflicted  with 


4  Introduction. 

one  doctrine  after  another,  until  at  length  the  breach  between 
them  is  too  alarming  to  be  any  longer  disregarded.  The  time 
has  come,  it  is  thought,  to  attempt  their  correlation  and  re- 
conciliation more  formally  and  thoroughly,  by  assigning -to  a 
single  professor  the  whole  of  that  intermediate  ground  formed 
by  their  intersection  and  common  to  them  both :  and  hence 
the  title  which  the  college  authorities  have  given  to  the  chair 
is  the  "  Harmony  of  Science  and  Revealed  Religion." 

Now,  from  this  very  title  it  will  be  seen,  that  the  region 
before  us,  strictly  speaking,  is  no  unknown  realm  in  the  world 
of  learning,  but  is  rather  a  strip  of  border  land — unfortunately 
also  a  scene  of  border  warfare — between  two  adjacent  prov- 
inces of  ancient  name  and  renown.  We  shall  best  be  able  to 
define  its  limits  by  first  carefully  excluding  on  either  side 
what  does  not  fairly  belong  to  it,  and  then  viewing  what  re- 
mains as  its  proper  field  and  material. 

On  the  one  hand,  then,  let  it  be  premised,  that  this  is  not  a 
department  of  purely  scientific  instruction.  It  will  not  be  the 
province  of  the  chair  to  teach  any  of  the  sciences  considered 
as  bodies  of  positive  knowledge,  or  to  espouse  any  of  the  theo- 
ries by  which  men  of  science  are  divided  into  parties,  or,  still 
less,  to  broach  any  new  theories  upon  scientific  questions. 
Such  researches,  in  fact,  would  not  be  possible,  and  might  not 
be  desirable.  They  would  not  be  possible,  because  no  single 
mind  could  master  all  the  sciences  so  as  to  be  at  home  in 
each  of  them ;  and  they  might  not  be  desirable,  since  those 
very  faculties  and  habits  of  mind  which  are  needed  in  special 
investigations,  would  hinder  rather  than  help  that  more 
abstract  and  philosophical  work  which  we  have  before  us. 
Moreover,  full  provision  for  them  has  already  been  made  in 
the  academic  system ;  and  instead  of  intruding  upon  other 
established  departments  of  learning,  it  should  rather  be  our 
duty  and  privilege  simply  to  accept  the  scientific  facts  and 
theories  therein  presented,  and  then  proceed  to  study  them 
in  their  relations  to  religious  truth  and  knowledge.  In  a 
word,  we  must  leave  out  of  view  so  much  of  Science  as  cannot 
be  brought  into  connection  with  Revealed  Religion. 

On  the  other  hand,  however,  let  it  be  premised  also,  that  this 
is  not  a  department  of  merely  religious  instruction.     It  will 


Limits  of  Christian  Science.  5 

not  be  the  province  of  the  chair  to  teach  rehgion  profession- 
ally as  a  system  of  divinity,  or  to  defend  polemically  any  of 
the  creeds  by  which  the  religious  world  has  been  sundered 
into  various  denominations,  or,  much  less,  to  add  any  new 
creed  to  the  existing  medley.  However  wisely  such  questions 
might  divide  us  elsewhere,  yet  here,  as  a  body  of  students 
engaged  in  an  academic  pursuit,  we  meet  together  on  the 
high  ground  of  our  common  Christianity,  and  are  concerned 
for  its  defence  against  common  foes,  in  the  interest  of  truth  as 
well  as  of  virtue.  To  mingle  the  jargon  of  sects  with  that  of 
the  schools  would  but  make  worse  confusion,  tending  to  the 
reproach  of  sacred  learning  not  less  than  to  the  disadvantage 
of  the  secular.  And  we  need  not  fear  that  true  religion, 
whether  doctrinal  or  practical,  is  in  any  danger  of  being 
slighted,  at  its  own  time  and  place,  in  our  schemes  of  edu- 
cation. Instead  of  forcing  such  studies  into  the  more  scho- 
lastic part  of  a  curriculum,  we  may  safely  assume  the  leading 
religious  truths  and  doctrines  to  be  known  and  familiar, 
and  limit  ourselves  to  the  simple  task  of  showing  their  points 
of  contact  and  correspondence  with  scientific  facts,  and 
theories.  In  a  word,  we  must  leave  out  of  view  so  much  of 
Revealed  Religion  as  cannot  be  brought  into  connection  with 
Science. 

When  we  have  thus  excluded  what  is  purely  scientific 
teaching  on  the  one  side  and  merely  religious  teaching  on 
the  other,  there  remains  to  be  formed  a  midway  course,  which 
will  include  only  what  they  have  in  common ;  being  partly 
scientific  and  partly  religious  and  therefore,  properly  speak- 
ing, a  philosophical  department  of  instruction.  Within  such 
limits,  it  would  seem  to  be  the  province  of  the  chair  to  teach 
both  religion  and  science  so  far  as  they  are  logically  con- 
nected ;  to  inculcate  their  mutual  relations  as  joint  interests 
of  truth  ;  to  define  their  boundaries  and  laws  as  neighboring 
domains  of  research ;  and  to  exhibit  their  contents  and  results 
as  one  harmonious  body  of  knowledge.  They  are  thus  brought 
together  in  the  very  title  of  the  professorship ;  and  to  treat 
them  otherwise,  to  pursue  them  as  conflicting  branches  of 
learning  or  array  them  as  antagonists  on  the  field  of  inquiry, 
would  be  both  unphilosophical  and  perilous.     It  would  be 


6  Introduction. 

unphilosophical,  because  it  would  mar  and  sunder  vast  por- 
tions of  truth  which  logically  require  each  other  and  which, 
as  lovers  of  truth,  we  should  seek  to  combine  together  in  their 
integrity  and  consistency ;  and  it  would  be  perilous,  since  it 
could  only  tend  in  its  moral  effects  either  toward  superstition 
or  toward  bigotry,  according  as  we  became  mere  partisans 
of  one  interest  against  the  other.  It  has,  in  fact,  ever  been  the 
boast  of  our  colleges  that  in  them  religion  and  science  have 
been  practically  taught  in  harmony,  and  it  is  simply  in  order 
to  promote  such  harmony  that  a  new  teacher  has  been  charged 
with  it  as  his  special  vocation.  In  so  far  as  he  fulfills  that 
vocation,  he  will  only  be  helping  forward  a  work  which  dates 
from  the  origin  of  Christian  learning,  but  which,  owing  to  the 
growth  of  knowledge  and  the  rise  of  new  opinions,  has  be- 
come too  vast  for  any  one  already  immersed  in  more  special 
researches  and  too  important  to  be  left  to  the  risks  of  a  casual 
treatment.  The  increasing  multiplicity  of  intellectual  pur- 
suits seems  to  call  for  this  new  division  of  labor  in  the  com- 
munity of  scholars,  and  there  need  be  no  fear  that  other  fields 
will  suffer  curtailment  or  invasion.  Leaving  the  existing  sci- 
entific and  religious  courses  undisturbed,  the  proposed  course 
will  simply  aim  to  connect  and  complete  them ;  to  take  the 
materials  of  truth  which  they  respectively  furnish  in  a  frag- 
mentary or  unrelated  state  and  organize  them  into  a  rational 
system ;  to  show  that  all  ascertained  facts  of  nature  and  re- 
vealed truths  of  Scripture  are  not  only  congruous,  but  com- 
plemental ;  that  even  such  scientific  hypotheses  and  religious 
dogmas  as  seem  to  be  in  conflict  are  passing  under  fixed 
logical  laws,  through  a  process  of  mutual  correction  and  con- 
ciliation, into  a  similar  region  of  coherent  verities ;  that  it  is 
thus  the  mission  of  science  to  confirm  and  illustrate  religious 
truths  and  of  religion  to  give  rational  support  and  consistency 
to  scientific  facts ;  and  that,  sooner  or  later  in  the  history  of 
mankind,  there  must  result  a  perfect  coincidence  of  human 
with  divine  knowledge,  together  with  a  practical  blending 
of  all  the  great  interests  issuing  therefrom.  In  a  word,  that 
Religion  and  Science  cannot  do  without  each  other;  that  God 
hath  joined  them  together  and  man  dare  not  put  them 
asunder — this  must  be  taken  as  the  key-note  to  their  Harmony. 


Topics  of  CJiristian  Science.  y 

Glancing  next  at  the  materials  or  topics  inclosed  in  the 
province  thus  defined,  we  shall  be  at  once  embarrassed  by 
their  richness  and  variety.  The  most  meagre  synopsis  of 
them  (and  as  yet  none  other  can  be  given),  may  serve  to  show 
the  ample  scope  of  our  inquiries.  There  will  be  two  general 
courses  of  study,  corresponding  to  the  two  sides  of  the  de- 
partment, and  these  two  courses,  as  made  consecutive  or 
parallel,  will  be  joined  in  a  third,  designed  for  their  comple- 
tion and  unity. 

On  the  religious  side,  we  shall  at  first  be  occupied  with  the 
study  of  Natural  Theology  as  already  in  harmony  with  the 
Physical  Sciences,  from  astronomy  to  anthropology : — the  ex- 
istence of  a  rational  First  Cause  of  the  universe  as  evinced  by 
traces  of  design  and  contrivance  in  each  natural  object  and 
throughout  all  nature ;  the  personality  of  that  First  Cause  as 
at  once  conceivable,  cognizable,  and  scientifically  probable; 
and  the  attributes  of  that  Divine  Person,  his  creative  power, 
wisdom,  and  goodness  as  displayed  throughout  the  whole 
inanimate  and  animate  creation.  To  this  will  succeed  the 
study  of  Natural  Religion  as  connected  with  the  Mental  Sci- 
ences, from  psychology  to  metaphysics  : — the  probability  of 
a  future  life  as  suggested  by  both  material  and  spiritual  analo- 
gies ;  of  a  divine  government  as  based  upon  moral  and  social 
facts  interpreted  according  to  any  ethical  theory ;  of  a  present 
state  of  trial  and  discipline  as  required  for  the  future  fulfillment 
of  our  mental  and  moral  capacities  and  for  the  completion  of 
the  divine  government ;  together  with  the  perfect  reconcila- 
bleness  of  the  whole  theology  and  theodicy  with  any  true 
metaphysical  and  ethical  theory  of  the  world.  Having  thus 
traced  the  scientific  evidences  of  natural  religion  by  the  aid  of 
Paley  and  Butler,  we  shall  then  proceed  to  the  problems  of 
Revealed  Religion  with  a  view  to  its  connection  and  harmony 
with  Science: — the  probability  of  a  supernatural  revelation  as 
sustained  by  the  analogies  of  natural  knowledge;  the  paradoxes 
of  revelation  as  equalled  by  those  of  science ;  the  historical 
development  of  revealed  religion  ;  the  history  of  its  evidences, 
from  the  primitive  miracles  and  prophecies,  through  the  suc- 
cessive conflicts  of  Christianity  with  Judaism,  with  Paganism, 
with    Philosophy,  with  Barbarism,   with    Mohammedanism, 


8  hitroduction. 

with  Rationalism  and  Heathenism ;  the  classification  of  its 
evidences ;  their  logical  and  ethical  value  as  estimated  by- 
rival  evidential  schools ;  their  prospective  increase  and  the 
new  modern  evidence  already  accruing  from  the  more  perfect 
sciences  and  likely  to  accrue  through  the  whole  scale  of  the 
sciences,  with  ever-cumulative  probability  toward  moral  cer- 
tainty itself  The  tendency  of  this  part  of  the  course  will  be 
to  show  the  importance  of  science  to  religion. 

On  the  scientific  side,  meanwhile,  we  shall  be  pursuing  the 
study  of  Inductive  Science,  both  physical  and  psychical,  with 
a  view  to  its  connection  with  Revealed  Religion  : — the  defini- 
tion of  science  in  distinction  from  common  knowledge  and 
from  mere  speculation ;  the  different  classifications  of  the 
sciences,  with  the  only  philosophical  classification  as  based 
upon  the  order  of  facts  in  space  and  time  ;  the  logical  methods 
of  the  different  sciences,  both  physical  and  mental,  and  their 
normal  scale  from  astronomy  to  anthropology,  and  from 
psychology  to  theology.  To  this  may  be  added  the  study  of 
their  history,  the  true  progress  made  in  each  of  them  by  their 
chief  votaries  through  the  discovery  of  facts  and  verifica- 
tion of  theories,  together  with  still  contending  hypotheses, 
authorities  and  arguments ;  their  relative  stages  of  advance- 
ment and  the  prospects  of  their  gradual  completion.  After 
thus  following  the  great  masters  of  inductive  logic,  from 
Bacon  to  Whewell,  we  shall  then  advance  to  the  more  ab- 
struse problems  of  Metaphysical  Science  in  its  harmony  with 
Revealed  Religion: — the  proved  existence  of  a  Creator  or  Ab- 
solute Mind  as  the  only  rational  postulate  and  support  of 
science ;  the  validity  of  reason  and  revelation  as  respective 
functions  of  the  divine  intellect  and  human  intellect  and  cor- 
relate factors  of  knowledge  in  all  the  sciences ;  the  logical 
rules  or  canons  applicable  to  their  normal  relations  in  the 
sciences,  to  their  existing  relations,  to  their  prospective  rela- 
tions;  and  the  ideal  perfectibility  of  knowledge  through  a 
gradual  concurrence  of  reason  with  revelation  and  final 
coincidence  of  science  with  religion.  The  tendency  of  this 
part  of  the  course  will  be  to  show  the  importance  of  religion 
to  science. 

At  length  on  the  basis  of  these  elementary,  though  abstract 


Importance  of  Christian  Science.  9 

reasonings,  will  follow  their  most  practical  and  popular  applica- 
tion in  the  ensuing  course  of  lectures,  treating  of  the  historical 
origin,  development  and  prospects  of  Christian  science;  of 
the  early  conflicts  and  alliances  between  science  and  religion 
from  the  dawn  of  Greek  philosophy  to  the  Reformation ;  of 
modern  antagonism  between  science  and  religion  as  main- 
tained by  infidels  and  apologists  in  the  different  sciences,  in 
philosophy  and  in  civilization ;  of  modern  indifferentism ; 
modern  eclecticism ;  modern  scepticism,  each  treated  in  the 
same  manner;  and  of  the  essential  harmony  of  science  and 
religion  as  involving  the  promotion  of  the  one,  the  vindication 
of  the  other,  and  the  consequent  establishment  of  the  Final 
Philosophy  or  theory  and  art  of  perfect  knowledge. 

Such  is  the  task  before  us.  The  bare  statement  of  it  would 
be.  enough  to  intimidate  and  appal  us,  were  the  perfect  fulfill- 
ment of  it  to  be  exacted  from  any  single  mind.  Indeed,  no- 
thing but  its  transcendent  importance  and  urgency  could  war- 
rant our  undertaking  it ;  and  it  therefore  behooves  us,  first  of 
all,  to  assure  ourselves  that  it  is  both  practicable  and  desirable. 

But  here,  at  the  threshold,  we  are  met  by  an  objection 
which  should  be  challenged  and  repelled  from  the  outset, 
though  it  can  only  be  thoroughly  treated  at  a  subsequent 
stage  of  our  investigation.  It  may  be  said,  as  indeed  it  has 
sometimes  been  said,  that  religion  and  science  have  nothing 
to  do  with  each  other ;  that  the  one  is  matter  of  mere  faith, 
the  other  of  pure  knowledge  ;  the  one  a  product  of  divine 
revelation,  the  other  of  human  reason;  the  one  concerned 
only  with  eternal  affairs,  the  other  with  temporal ;  in  a  word, 
that  the  two  interests  are  absolutely  distinct  and  incongruous, 
so  that  any  attempt  to  join  or  blend  them  would  be  but  the 
fond  conceit  of  a  devout  or  a  speculative  fancy.  There  have 
been  sober  men  of  science,  like  Faraday,  who  could  see  no 
advantage  in  tieing  up  the  study  of  the  physical  sciences  with 
natural  religion,  and  j udicious  divines,  like  Chalmers,  who  would 
deprecate  a  mere  academic  theism  or  speculative  theology  as 
tending  to  intellectual  pride  and  unbelief,  and  the  authority  of 
Bacon  himself  has  been  cited  against  such  a  union  as  "a  mix- 
ture which  makes  both  an  heretical  religion  and  a  fantastical 
philosophy." 

B 


lO  hitrodnctmi. 

Now,  that  there  may  be  modes  of  viewing  and  exhibiting 
science  and  religion  in  conjunction,  which  are  open  to  this 
objection,  need  not  be  questioned.  Were  true  science  com- 
bined with  a  false  rehgion,  or  the  true  rehgion  combined  with 
false  science,  the  only  result  would  be  their  mutual  degrada- 
tion and  degeneracy,  as  when  the  sons  of  God  became  mated 
with  the  daughters  of  men  and  were  cursed  with  a  progeny  of 
giants  in  sin.  But  the  real  question  is,  whether  true  science 
and  true  religion  are  Avholly  insusceptible  of  being  correlated ; 
whether,  though  distinct  and  diverse,  they  are  not  still  recipro- 
cal and  complemental ;  whether,  in  a  word,  when  brought 
together  and  logically  adjusted,  they  will  not  prove  to  be  but 
opposite  halves  of  the  same  rounded  whole  of  truth,  support- 
ing segments  in  the  same  rising  arch  of  knowledge,  harmoni- 
ous interests,  wedded 

"  Like  perfect  music  unto  noble  words." 

At  the  first  glance,  by  their  most  common  definition,  their 
I  relationship  will  assert  itself.  Science  is  exact  knowledge 
\  and  religion  is  revealed  doctrine ;  but  revealed  doctrine  and 
exact  knowledge  of  what  ?  Of  facts  ;  and  largely,  of  the  very 
same  facts.  For,  of  every  class  of  facts,  there  is  both  a  reli- 
gious aspect  and  a  scientific  aspect,  a  phase  of  them  which  has 
been  revealed  by  God  and  a  phase  of  them  which  has  been 
discovered  by  man.  The  mere  scientist  may  seek  to  view 
them  in  an  exclusively  scientific  light,  as  phenomena  of  nature, 
or  the  mere  religionist  may  try  to  view  them  in  an  exclusively 
religious  light,  as  manifestations  of  God  ;  but  after  all,  they  are 
but  the  same  objects  contemplated  on  different  sides ;  the 
same  realities,  bearing  phases  both  of  which  are  equally  es- 
sential to  their  reality.  We  might  almost  as  well  attempt  to 
ignore  the  facts  themselves  in  which  science  and  religion  are 
but  rooted  branches  of  truth,  as  to  ignore  their  relations  to 
each  other. 

Let  us  take  an  illustration  from  astronomy.  In  the  starry 
heavens  the  scientific  observer  discovers  illimitable  matter 
and  force  disposed  throughout  space  and  time  under  fixed 
mechanical  laws ;  in  other  words,  a  department  of  physics ; 
while  the  religious  observer  beholds  the  immensity,  eternity, 


Relations  of  Science  and  Religion.  1 1 

omnipotence,  and  wisdom  of  the  one  true  God ;  in  a  word,  a 
department  of  theology.  Now,  these  different  aspects  of  the 
same  phenomena,  these  almost  opposite  views  of  the  same 
facts,  are  not  only  equally  true,  but  equally  essential  to  make 
up  the  whole  truth  in  regard  to  those  facts.  The  one  has 
been  most  surely  discovered  by  man,  and  the  other  as  cer- 
tainly revealed  by  God,  and  neither  can  be  surrendered  but  at 
the  sacrifice  or  peril  of  both.  Celestial  physics  without  the 
postulate  of  a  Great  First  Cause  or  Creator,  would  be  little  bet- 
ter than  the  elephant  in  the  cosmogony  of  the  Brahmin,  which 
upheld  the  world  and  yet  itself  stood  upon  nothing ;  and  the 
Jehovah  of  the  Bible  without  the  astronomical  illustration  of 
His  attributes  would  now  seem  but  like  an  Israelitish  Jupiter 
enthroned  in  the  clouds  of  Palestine.  The  absurdity  of  the 
one  in  a  scientific  light  would  only  be  equalled  by  the  super- 
stition of  the  other  in  a  religious  light.  But  let  these  two 
half  truths  or  halves  of  truth  be  brought  together ;  let  the 
laws  which  bind  sun,  planet,  and  satellite  in  their  spheres  be 
viewed  as  expressions  of  the  divine  will  and  the  whole  theatre 
of  immensity  be  lighted  up  with  the  divine  intelligence,  and 
then  both  the  sage  and  the  saint  can  together  exclaim,  "  The 
heavens  declare  the  glory  of  God." 

Our  first  argument  then  is,  that  religion  and  science  are 
related  logically.  By  their  very  definition  it  becomes  incon- 
ceivable, if  not  impossible,  that  they  should  form  two  distinct 
kinds  of  truth,  flying  apart  in  everlasting  contradiction.  The 
scientific  view  of  the  universe,  and  the  religious  view  of  the 
universe,  stand  or  fall  together.  Take  either  from  the  other, 
and  you  would  have  but  half  the  truth,  and  that  half  without 
logical  support.  Imagine,  if  you  can,  science  perfected  with- 
out religion,  all  phenomena  referred  to  their  laws  and  all  laws 
to  their  causes,  and  you  would  still  need  the  rational  postu- 
late of  a  great  First  Cause  of  those  causes,  and  a  great  Final 
Cause  of  those  laws,  such  as  you  can  only  find  in  the  Jehovah 
of  Scripture,  the  Alpha  and  the  Omega,  the  beginning  and  the 
end,  which  was  and  which  is  and  which  is  to  come,  God 
over  all  blessed  forever.  Or,  on  the  other  hand,  try  to  ima- 
gine religion  completed  without  science,  the  one  true  God 
revealed  in  all  the  plenitude  of  His  perfections,  and  you  would 


1 2  Introduction. 

still  need  as  a  rational  counterpart  of  this  revelation,  such  an 
illustration  of  His  perfections  as  the  different  sciences  alone 
can  afford;  celestial  physics  to  unfold  His  immensity,  eter- 
nity and  omnipotence;  terrestrial  physics,  to  display  His- wis- 
dom and  goodness;  and  the  psychical  sciences,  to  approve  His 
holiness,  justice  and  truth.  If  your  science  without  religion 
would  land  you  in  the  absurdity  of  a  creation  without  a  Crea- 
tor, your  religion  without  science  would  Leave  you  with  the 
abstraction  of  a  Creator  without  a  creation.  But  imagine 
now  that  Creator  inhabiting  yet  controlling  His  creation; 
think  of  all  natural  laws  as  resolved  into  divine  methods,  and 
of  divine  attributes  as  expressed  in  all  natural  phenomena  ; 
and  you  will  see  how  perfectly  logical,  how  absolutely 
reasonable  is  the  correlation  and  coalescence  of  science  and 
religion. 

But,  in  the  second  place,  they  are  related  historically  as 
well  as  logically.  Their  connection  is  not  merely  nominal 
and  ideal,  but  real  and  actual.  It  is  simple  matter  of  fact, 
that  they  have  grown  up  together  through  all  the  past.  The 
history  of  the  one  cannot  be  written  without  that  of  the  other. 
They  appear  in  every  age  as  twin-factors  of  human  progress. 
In  all  nations,  as  in  all  individuals,  they  have  proceeded  side 
by  side,  and  their  successive  conflicts  and  alliances  have 
formed  the  crises  and  turning-points  in  the  development  of 
civilization.  Their  very  representatives  have  been  the  central 
figures  in  every  great  scene  of  history.  In  Egypt,  out  of 
which  Moses  comes  with  the  wisdom  of  the  Pharaohs  as  the 
true  conqueror  of  the  Sphinx,  behold  religion  nursed  in  the 
cradle  of  science :  in  Judea,  whither  eastern  sages  are  led  by 
a  star  to  the  incarnate  Christ,  behold  science  bowed  at  the 
shrine  of  religion :  in  Greece,  where  Paul  from  the  Areopagus 
declares  to  the  Epicureans  and  Stoics  their  unknown  god, 
behold  religion  solving  the  problems  of  science  :  in  Pagan 
Rome,  when  Plato  speaks  through  the  apologies  of  Justin, 
behold  science  defending  religion :  in  Christian  Rome,  when 
Aquinas  reasons  with  the  logic  of  Aristotle,  behold  reli- 
gion reclaiming  science :  in  Italy,  when  Galileo  braves  the 
anathemas  of  the  Church,  behold  science  dissipating  the 
superstitions  of  religion:    in  Germany,  when   Luther   gives 


Connections  of  Science  and  Religion.  13 

back  the  Bible  to  the  world,  behold  rehgion  rekindling  the 
torch  of  science  :  in  America,  whence  a  young  Christian  civil- 
ization is  already  scattering  light  and  life,  behold  science 
giving  wings  to  religion:  and  through  coming  ages,  as  know- 
ledge runs  to  and  fro  and  holiness  fills  the  earth,  behold  both 
religion  and  science  together  shedding  their  millennial  splen- 
dor. What,  indeed,  from  the  highest  point  of  view,  is  the 
history  of  the  world  but  the  history  of  science  and  religion  ? 

And,  in  the  third  place,  they  are  also  related  practically. 
Their  logical  and  historical  connection  bears  its  fruit  before 
our  eyes.  In  common  life  they  appear  as  united  interests,  so 
vitally  bound  up  together  that  neither  could  live  without  the 
other,  and  both  would  perish  were  they  torn  asunder.  If  you 
view  them  in  your  own  experience,  you  will  find  that  it  is 
simply  impracticable  that  your  faith  should  contradict  your 
knowledge,  that  you  could  hold  as  true  in  religion  what 
you  believed  to  be  false  in  science,  or  as  true  in  science  what 
you  knew  to  be  false  in  religion.  And  if  you  view  them  in 
the  world  at  large,  you  will  find  them  so  intertwined  that  they 
must  flourish  or  decay  together.  Strike  a  blow  at  either  and 
you  wound  both.  Think  of  what  society  would  be,  were 
religion  cultivated  to  the  absolute  neglect  of  science, — a  reign 
of  superstition,  tyranny,  and  barbarism,  likelhat  which  covered 
Europe  during  the  dark  ages  of  the  Church.  Think  of  what 
society  would  be,  were  science  cultivated  to  the  utter  neglect 
of  religion, — a  reign  of  infidelity,  impiety  and  sensuality, 
brilliant  but  abortive,  like  that  which  in  French  history  has 
been  written  in  letters  of  blood  and  terror.  Then  think  of 
what  the  world  would  be,  were  these  two  great  interests  pur- 
sued together,  correcting  and  perfecting  each  other,  until 
civilization  shall  have  triumphed  over  barbarism,  and  Chris- 
tianity over  heathenism  throughout  the  earth, — and  you  will 
see  that  history  joins  with  reason,  and  experience  with  theory 
in  asserting  the  living  reality  of  their  relations. 

And  their  relations  are  very  extensive.  They  do  not 
merely  touch  at  occasional  points,  but  form  one  continuous 
junction.  There  is  no  truth  in  Scripture  which  does  not  im- 
pinge upon  some  fact  in  nature,  as  there  is  no  fact  in  nature 
which  does  not  bear  upon  some  truth  in  Scripture.    Scientific 


14  Introduction. 

theories  and  religious  doctrines  act  and  re-act  upon  each 
other  throughout  the  domain  of  research.  We  have  but  to 
glance  along  the  boundary  line  of  the  two  departments  in 
order  to  see  their  correspondences.  Each  science  is  connected 
with  some  biblical  doctrine ;  astronomy,  with  the  doctrine  of 
creation  and  the  angels ;  geology,  with  the  doctrine  of 
genesis  and  the  sabbath;  anthropology,  with  the  doctrine  of 
the  first  and  second  Adam;  psychology,  with  the  doctrine 
of  regeneration  and  immortality ;  sociology,  with  the  doctrine 
of  the  Church  and  the  millennium;  theology,  with  all  the 
peculiar  doctrines  of  Christianity.  In  a  word,  the  cyclopaedia 
of  science  runs  parallel  with  that  of  religion. 

Moreover,  their  relations  are  very  complicated.  Instead 
of  forming  a  bare  contact,  they  overlap  and  combine,  like  in- 
tersecting spheres  or  intertwining  branches.  Though  the  facts 
of  nature  and  truths  of  Scripture  are  ever  accordant,  yet  the 
scientific  hypotheses  explaining  those  facts  and  the  religious 
dogmas  expressing  those  truths  have  become  entangled 
together  in  endless  knots  of  controversy.  Every  such  dogma 
is  involved  in  some  such  hypothesis.  The  dogma  of  imme- 
diate creation  is  involved  in  the  rival  hypotheses  of  evolu- 
tion and  succession  ;  the  dogma  of  the  six  days'  genesis,  in  the 
rival  hypotheses  of  uniformity  and  catastrophe ;  the  dogma 
of  the  Adamic  covenant,  in  the  rival  hypotheses  of  unity  and 
plurality  of  races ;  the  dogma  of  the  resurrection,  in  the  rival 
speculations  of  the  spiritualist  and  materialist ;  the  dogma  of 
divine  right,  in  the  rival  schemes  of  the  socialist  and  legiti- 
mist; and  all  the  peculiar  dogmas  of  orthodoxy,  in  the  rival 
systems  of  the  naturalist  and  supernaturalist.  In  fact,  every- 
thing dogmatic  in  religion  is  tied  up  with  something  hypo- 
thetic in  science. 

It  need  scarcely  be  added,  that  their  relations  are  also  very 
vital.  Not  in  any  merely  harmless  or  abstract  manner  do 
they  thus  take  hold  of  each  other's  very  heart  and  life.  De- 
spite our  general  belief  that  all  religious  truths  and  scientific 
facts  will  be  found  accordant,  yet  at  present  there  is  no 
doctrine  which  is  not  staked  in  some  theory  and  no  theory 
which  is  not  staked  in  some  doctrine.  If  we  hold  the  one  we 
must  let  go  the  other,  while  if  wc  give  up  either  we  may  lose 


Reconciliation  of  Science  and  Religion.  1 5 

both.  What  becomes  of  our  theory  of  the  heavens,  if  we  hold 
that  the  worlds  were  commanded  full-born  from  nothing  ?  and 
yet,  if  we  hold  that  they  have  been  slowly  evolved  from  nebu- 
las, where  is  our  doctrine  of  creation  ?  What  becomes  of  our 
theory  of  the  earth,  if  we  hold  that  it  was  made  in  six  days  of 
twenty-four  hours?  and  yet,  if  we  hold  that  it  has  been  de- 
veloped through  unmeasured  time,  where  is  our  doctrine  of  the 
sabbath  ?  What  becomes  of  our  theory  of  races,  if  we  hold 
that  they  descended  from  Adam  and  Eve?  and  yet,  if  we  hold 
that  they  sprang  from  indigenous  centres,  where  is  our  doc- 
trine of  the  divine  image  and  fall  of  man  ?  What  becomes  of 
our  theory  of  the  soul,  if  we  hold  that  it  is  independent  of  the 
body?  and  yet  if  we  hold  that  it  is  interwoven  with  the  body, 
where  is  our  doctrine  of  immortality  and  the  resurrection  ? 
What  becomes  of  our  theory  of  society,  if  we  hold  that  the 
millennium  will  be  sudden  and  miraculous?  and  yet,  if  we  hold 
that  it  will  be  historical  and  rational,  where  is  our  doctrine  of 
the  second  coming  and  judgment  of  Christ?  What  becomes 
of  our  whole  theory  of  religion,  if  we  hold  to  a  special  and 
supernatural  revelation?  and  yet  if  we  hold  to  one  that  is 
natural  and  universal,  where  are  all  the  distinctive  doctrines 
of  Christianity  ?  Whatsoever  we  may  hold  in  religion  is  thus 
so  adventured  with  whatsoever  we  may  hold  in  science  as  to 
put  in  peril  the  very  life  of  truth  and  virtue. 

If,  then,  these  relations  are  so  extensive,  so  complicated,  so 
vital,  they  do  surely  require  adjustment  and  admit  of  harmo- 
ny. It  will  appear  at  a  glance,  that  they  are  not  what  they 
should  be,  or  what  they  might  be,  or  what  they  will  be. 

They  are  not  what  they  should  be.  Their  existing  state  is 
not  their  normal  state.  Were  religion  and  science  perfected, 
they  would  together  form  one  harmonious  body  of  truth. 
Unless  we  adopt  the  monstrous  conceit,  that  the  one  is  exclu- 
sively true  and  the  other  utterly  false,  the  one  wholly  of  God 
and  the  other  merely  of  the  devil;  or  the  equally  wild  fancy, 
that  both  are  fictitious,  the  one  mere  superstition  and  the 
other  all  delusion, — we  must  grant  their  present  conflict  to  be 
abnormal.  No  one  who  holds  to  the  truth  in  each  of  them 
can  believe  their  ideal  state  to  be  one  of  sheer  contradiction. 
Whatever  paradoxes  may  now  obscure  them,  he  knows  that 


1 6  Introduction. 

in  themselves  they  are  congruous,  and  has  but  to  survey  the 
chaos  of  creeds  and  theories  resulting  from  their  existing  an- 
tagonism, in  order  to  assure  himself  that  as  yet  their  relations 
are  not  what  they  should  be. 

As  little  are  they  what  they  might  be.  Their  existing  state 
is  not  their  necessary  state.  No  fatality  has  doomed  th-em  to 
an  abnormal  strife.  No  insuperable  obstacle  forbids  their  ad- 
justment. Not  only  have  we  a  moral  pre -assurance  of  it,  but 
we  have  also  capacities  and  means  for  facilitating  it.  We  have 
simply  to  bring  the  two  interests  logically  together  as  fast  as 
they  mature,  and  under  the  natural  laws  of  thought,  by  the 
spontaneous  affinities  of  truth,  they  will  shake  off  all  accretive 
errors  and- run  together  like  drops  of  quicksilver  from  the  dust. 
If  our  theories  clash  with  our  creeds,  this  is  not  because  of 
any  actual  disagreement  between  natural  facts  and  revealed 
truths,  not  even  because  of  any  essential  defects  in  our  instru- 
ments of  knowledge,  but  simply  because  of  some  wrong  in- 
duction from  nature  or  some  false  interpretation  of  Scripture, 
because  of  some  illegitimate  use  either  of  reason  or  of  revelation. 
The  very  collisions  which  arise  between  science  and  religion 
in  spite  of -their  ideal  harmony,  are  evidence  that  as  yet  their 
relations  are  not  what  they  might  be. 

And  still  less  are  they  what  they  will  be.  Their  existing 
state  is  not  their  final  state.  The  harmony  possible  between 
them  is  becoming  actual.  History  shows  that  their  present 
derangement  is  transient  and  partial.  Already,  whatsoever  has 
been  certainly  discovered  in  nature  is  sufficiently  congruous 
with  whatsoever  has  been  plainly  revealed  in  Scripture.  It 
is  only  the  theoretical  and  the  doctrinal,  the  hypothetical  and 
the  dogmatic  portions  of  knowledge  which  remain  in  conflict, 
and  even  these  have  been  steadily  diminishing.  While  the 
least-developed  sciences  are  in  different  stages  of  opposition  to 
revealed  religion,  the  more  advanced  and  perfect  are  coming 
into  harmony  with  it  and  yielding  it  new  defence  and  illustra- 
tion ;  and  while  the  least-important  doctrines  are  in  seeming 
conflict  with  science,  the  more  essential  and  fundamental  may 
already  be  taken  as  its  only  rational  postulates.  And  this 
mutual  demonstration,  this  logical  interaction,  must  go  on 
from  one  class  of  facts  and  truths  to  another,  until  the  reason 


TJie  Great  Reconciliation.  ly 

of  man  shall  stand  forth  coincident  with  the  word  of  God.  As 
sure  as  the  future  will  be  born  out  of  the  past,  as  sure  as  truth 
must  in  the  end  be  found  consistent  with  truth,  so  sure  it  is 
that  science  and  religion  are  destined  to  harmony. 

But  here  it  may  be  asked,  whether  we  are  not  proving  too 
much  for  our  purpose.  If  the  two  interests  are  so  surely  des- 
tined to  harmony,  why  meddle  with  them  ?  Why  attempt  to 
adjust  them?  Let  them  alone,  and  they  will  adjust  them- 
selves. Providence,  without  artificial  aid,  will  in  the  due  time 
and  way  bring  about  the  reconciliation.  In  one  sense,  this 
may  be  true.  The  great  social  and  historic  process  of  har- 
monizing science  and  religion  may  indeed  be  viewed  as  a 
Providential  achievement,  a  work  of  that  Divine  Intellect  whose 
revealed  promises  and  rational  premises  combine  to  ensure 
its  fulfillment,  even  in  spite  of  all  human  error.  And  if  any  one 
is  fain  to  adjourn  the  whole,  question  to  such  a  distant  mil- 
lenium,  we  would  not  disturb  his  confidence. '  He  is  wel- 
come, if  he  can,  to  live  in  that  grand  future.  But  let  him  still 
have  charity  for  those  who  must  live  in  the  present,  and  whose 
faith  in  the  future  does  not  blind  them  either  to  the  labors  of 
the  past  or  to  the  duties  of  the  present.  Remember,  it  is  not 
always  the  mere  espousal  of  truth  which  will  secure  its  tri- 
umph ;  nor  need  the  certainty  of  that  triumph  relax  all  effort. 
Does  the  warrior  sheathe  his  sword  in  mid-battle,  because  the 
foe  is  yielding  ?  And  shall  that  great  moral  victory  which 
we  discern  as  yet  only  afar  off  have  any  other  effect  than  to 
kindle  our  zeal  and  courage?  Besides,  we  have  our  places  in 
the  ranks  and  our  parts  in  the  battle.  The  victory  will  not 
come  without  our  agency.  Providence  is  pleased  to  effect  it 
by  means  of  human  intellects,  through  successive  generations, 
rather  than  to  send  it  upon  the  world  as  a  mere  happy  acci- 
dent or  blessed  miracle.  And  instead  of  projecting  it  as  a 
distant  ideal  beyond  our  present  concern,  it  behooves  us  to 
struggle  towards  it  as  if  it  were  within  our  reach,  to  be  impa- 
tient of  existing  evils  which  hinder  its  realization,  to  feel  our 
responsibility  for  its  attainment  and  ever  exalt  it  in  our  esteem 
over  all  inferior  aims  and  attractions. 

We  are  now  ready  to  estimate  the  importance  of  the  great 
reconciliation.     And  first,  is  it  not  important  to  Religion  that 


1 8  Introduction. 

she  should  be  in  harmony  with  science  ?  It  is  true,  she  does 
not  depend  upon  science  for  the  regeneration  of  the  individual. 
Among  her  most  sincere  followers  are  those  who  know  little 
even  of  theological  science,  and  still  less  of  science  in 
general,  while  some  of  her  most  learned  scholars,  after  preach- 
ing to  others,  might  become  castaways.  It  is  true,  too,  that 
she  may  not  be  essentially  dependent  upon  science  even  for 
the  regeneration  of  society.  We  can  conceive,  that  divine 
revelation  might  have  been  made  at  the  first  demonstrative, 
instantaneous,  universal,  like  the  noon-day  sun,  instead  of 
having  been  like  the  twilight  dawn,  restricted  to  small  por- 
tions of  mankind,  prolonged  through  thousands  of  years,  and 
composed  of  only  credible  material ;  and  we  may  even  dream 
of  new  miracles  and  further  revelations  as  means  of  vanquish- 
ing infidelity  and  promoting  Christianity.  But  hitherto  it  has 
not  pleased  Divine  Providence  so  to  govern  the  world ;  and 
taking  the  facts  as  we  now  find  them,  what  we  affirm  is,  that 
for  the  vindication  and  extension  of  religion,  science  should 
be  welcomed  as  a  useful  auxiliary,  if  not  an  indispensable  ally. 
It  would  seem  to  be  her  mission  to  testify,  though  often  as 
an  unconscious  witness,  to  the  authority  of  the  Scriptures ;  to 
aid  in  correcting  and  perfecting  our  fallible  interpretation  of 
their  meaning;  to  afford  the  propagating  appliances  of  art  and 
literature  and  commerce ;  in  a  word,  to  clothe  Christianity  in 
that  panoply  of  civilization,  by  means  of  which  superstition 
and  heathenism  are  to  be  subdued  throughout  the  earth.  She 
is  as  light  to  the  cross  and  wings  to  the  Church,  from  age  to 
age.  And  it  were  simply  idle  to  ignore  an  agent  capable  of 
becoming  either  so  valuable  a  friend  or  so  formidable  a  foe. 
Let  the  mere  religionist  who  is  fain  to  shut  himself  up  in 
pharisaic  scorn  of  her  claims,  beware  lest  the  oracles  of  God  be 
wrested  from  his  hands,  and  become  as  a  gospel  to  the 
Gentiles. 

Is  it  not  important  to  Science  also,  that  she  should  be 
in  harmony  with  religion  ?  Too  much  has  she  hitherto 
slighted  or  forgotten  her  indebtedness  to  religion.  Some  of 
her  most  zealous  votaries  have  worshipped  Nature  more  than 
God,  while  not  a  few  have  defied  the  very  altar  at  which  her 
torch  was  lighted.     It  need  not  be  denied  that  she  has  some- 


The  True   Ultimate  Philosophy.  19 

times  suffered  from  theological  hate  and  fanatical  interference; 
and  it  must  be  owned  also,  that  there  is  an  advantage  in 
freeing  her  from  the  trammels  of  sanctimonious  phraseology. 
Let  her  have  all  needed  liberty  of  research,  and  frame 
her  dialect  as  distinct  as  possible  from  that  of  worship. 
But  when  we  have  duly  made  such  allowances,  it  will  still  re- 
main true  that,  for  the  cultivation  and  completion  of  science,  the 
sentiments  and  ideas,  the  truths  and  doctrines  of  religion  are 
not  only  valuable,  but  essential.  Humility,  reverence,  docility, 
faith  are  no  less  requisite  in  the  pursuit  of  knowledge  than 
the  other  more  intellectual  qualifications ;  for  the  kingdom  of 
nature,  like  that  of  heaven,  can  only  be  entered  as  a  little  child. 
And  in  the  last  analysis,  that  Great  First  and  Final  Cause 
revealed  in  the  Scriptures,  affords  the  only  rational  theory 
of  the  world  upon  which  even  our  physical  researches  can 
proceed,  or  be  wrought  into. intelligible  unity.  Religion  alone, 
by  exhibiting  the  universe  as  the  creation  of  a  Creator,  can 
transform  it  from  chaos  to  cosmos ;  and  without  her  sublime 
revelation  it  would  be  not  less  anomalous. to  reason  than 
appalling  to  faith.  She  is  herself  the  very  lamp  of  reason  and 
the  only  clue  to  the  riddle  of  the  world.  Let  the  mere  sci- 
entist who  is  fain  to  cast  off  her  teachings  in  the  pride  of  re- 
search, be  assured  that  he  will  but  find  nature  to  be  her 
temple,  and  himself,  like  the  Athenian  of  old,  an  ignorant  wor- 
shipper at  her  shrine. 

And  lastly,  is  it  not  important  to  Philosophy,  as  the  \ 
friend  of  both  science  and  religion,  that  she  should  recog-  \ 
nise  and  pursue  their  harmony?  Her  aim  may  indeed 
seem  more  speculative  than  that  of  science,  and  less  prac- 
tical than  that  of  religion,  as  everywhere  she  searches 
for  truth  as  truth  for  its  own  sake.  And  her  course  in 
pursuit  of  that  aim  may  at  times  have  been  wayward,  as 
here  she  has  ignored  all  religion  for  the  sake  of  science, 
or  there  she  has  merged  all  science  in  religion.  Not  yet 
has  she  reached  her  own  lofty  ideal  by  embracing  them 
both  in  one  view.  Not  yet  has  she  wrought  that  complete 
system  of  knov/ledge  which  shall  combine  all  modes  of  in- 
quiiy  in  all  fields  of  research.  But  if  religion  and  science 
are   genuine   provinces    of   truth,    if  reason    and    revelation 


20  Introduction. 

are  correlate  factors  of  knowledge,  it  is  only  by  conjoining 
both  factors  throughout  both  provinces,  that  the  complete 
system  of  knowledge  can  ever  be  attained;  it  is  only  in  and 
through  the  harmony  of  science  and  religion  that  we  'may 
aspire  after  the  one  Ultimate  Philosophy. 

Descending  now  from  these  general  views,  for  a  glance  at 
the  educational  value  of  Christian  science,  we  shall  find  that 
it  ranks  with  the  highest  studies  which  can  mould  the  form- 
ing mind.  It  takes  its  place  among  them  as  a  course  of  ap- 
plied logic;  of  logic,  in  its  richest  inductive  processes,  and 
of  such  logic  as  applied  to  the  pre-eminent  problems  of 
science,  religion  and  philosophy.  Apart  from  its  momentous 
significance  in  a  moral  light,  it  cannot  but  have  an  intellectual 
advantage,  distinguishing  it  from  the  theological  study,  known 
as  Christian  Apologetics,  which  enters  more  particularly  into 
the  training  of  the  clergy  than  into  the  liberal  culture  of  those 
who  are  not  yet  committed  as  propagandists  of  a  creed.  We 
do  not  undervalue  such  attempts  to  render  science  tributary 
to  orthodoxy,  but  we  believe  it  possible  also  to  make  essen- 
tial Christianity  helpful  to  science,  and  that  this,  as  well  as  the 
other,  should  be  included  in  the  education  of  an  accom- 
plished scholar.  Moreover,  in  a  Philosophical  Faculty  as  distin- 
guished from  a  Theological  Faculty,  while  it  is  ever  of  absolute 
importance  to  forestall  the  objections  of  sceptics,  yet  the  more 
characteristic  aim  will  be  to  develop  the  intellectual  capaci- 
ties, to  discipline  the  reasoning  powers,  to  induce  philosophi- 
cal habits  of  thought,  and  to  subserve  the  interests  of  truth 
and  learning.  It  is,  in  fact,  for  such  secondary  purposes 
largely  that  the  great  works  of  Paley  and  Butler,  with  their 
acknowledged  defects,  have  been  used  so  long  in  the  English 
and  American  universities.  Though  primarily  designed  to 
repel  the  arguments  of  the  atheist  and  infidel,  yet  for  genera- 
tions they  have  also  served  as  a  kind  of  mental  gymnastic  for 
the  training  of  the  Christian  scholar  in  the  philosophy  of  re- 
ligion. In  this  character  they  may  almost  be  said  to  have  a 
valuation  with  the  higher  logic  or  mathematics ;  and  if  we 
may  judge  by  the  number  of  editions,  introductions,  com- 
pends,  analyses,  which  have  accumulated  for  the  help  of 
teachers   and  students,  they  are  not  likely  to  be  very  soon 


Tlie  Study  of  Christian  Science.  21 

supplanted.  Long  before  we  are  ready  to  store  them  away 
among  the  mere  trophies  in  the  arsenal  of  the  Christian  Evi- 
dences, they  may  yet  do  much  good  service  in  drilling  vigo- 
rous thinkers,  and  acute  reasoners,  as  well  as  able  defenders 
of  the  faith. 

But  besides  this  mere  intellectual  discipline,  this  incidental 
advantage  to  the  student,  there  will  be  the  still  higher  moral 
benefit  of  having  such  symmetrical  development  of  all  his 
powers  as  will  leave  neither  his  knowledge  nor  his  faith  in 
excess  or  at  variance,  and  of  being  furnished  with  such  sound, 
yet  catholic  principles,  as  will  fit  him  for  the  high  duties  ap- 
pertaining to  the  whole  educated  class  in  our  day.  The 
questions  with  which  we  are  to  deal  are  the  living  questions 
of  the  age.  Instead  of  being  restricted,  as  in  former  times, 
to  the  cloisters  of  divinity,  the  academies  of  science,  and  the 
shades  of  philosophy,  they  have  become  the  topics  of  the 
newspaper,  the  rail-car  and  the  fire-side.  And  they  are  rising  in 
importance  every  hour.  You  are  going  forth  to  meet  them  in 
a  practical  form.  As  lawyers,  physicians,  clergymen,  scholars 
in  every  walk  of  life,  you  will  soon  be  mingling  in  the  contro- 
versies of  your  generation.  You  will  soon  be  exposed  to  the 
intellectual  temptations  peculiar  to  your  respective  callings, 
and  to  all  the  evils  of  one-sided  culture  and  special  aims. 
You  will  be  taking  sides  in  the  great  battle  between  the 
knowledge  and  faith  of  the  time ;  and  it  rests  with  you  now 
to  determine,  in  these  preliminary  trials,  whether  you  shall 
hereafter  be  found  among  the  mere  bigots  and  charlatans  of 
your  day,  or  ranked  as  lovers  of  truth  and  benefactors  of 
mankind. 

As  to  the  pleasures  of  our  academic  task,  the  argument 
may  not  be  so  plain.  Unfortunately,  we  have  to  deal  with 
many  subjects  which  do  not  excite  a  spontaneous  interest  in 
all  minds.  Scientific  studies  are  too  dry  to  some  and  religious 
studies  too  grave  to  others,  to  be  esteemed  aught  than  mere 
task-work ;  and  when  both  are  to  be  pursued  together  in  the 
still  more  arid  walks  of  philosophy,  we  are  led  quite  away 
from  common  life  into  a  region  of  sublimated  thought  and 
feeling  toward  which  but  few  minds  are  attracted  and  which 
can  only  be  reached  by  long-sustained  efforts  of  attention  and 


22  Introdjiction. 

thought.  And  yet,  as  the  adventurous  traveller  in  search  of 
rare  prospects  in  nature,  while  ascending  some  difficult 
mountain  range,  scaling  peak  after  peak,  with  strained  nerve 
and  muscle,  will  be  rewarded  at  every  pause  with  a  healthier 
glow  and  a  grander  horizon,  so  in  the  course  of  these  arduous 
speculations  of  ours  we  may  enjoy  an  elevation  and  expansion 
of  mind,  fancy,  and  heart,  well  worth  all  the  labor  they  cost  us. 
There  will  be  that  intellectual  pleasure  which  springs  from 
the  discovery  of  new  truths,  and  the  perception  of  new  and 
beautiful  relations  between  them;  subtle  harmonies,  which 
easily  persuade  us 

"  How  charming  is  divine  philosophy ; 
Not  harsh  and  crabbed,  as  dull  fools  suppose, 
But  musical  as  is  Apollo's  lute." 

That  the  word  and  the  works  of  God  will  yet  be  found  har- 
monious ;  that  Nature  and  Scripture  must  appear  as  only  pages 
in  the  same  book  and  parts  of  one  argument ;  that  divine  re- 
velation is  one  day  to  be  supported  by  a  human  demonstra- 
tion ;  in  a  word,  that  science  shall  ever  expand  toward  Omni- 
science, is  at  once  a  yearning  and  a  presentiment  of  the 
philosophic  mind ;  and  as  we  trace  step  by  step  the  realiza- 
tion of  this  glorious  ideal,  we  may  know  something  of  that  keen 
mental  enjoyment  and  rational  exultation  with  which  the  zea- 
lous seeker  for  truth  cries  Eureka  at  the  goal  of  his  researches. 
There  will  also  be  that  imaginative  pleasure  which  attends 
an  enlargement  of  the  field  of  thought  and  a  multiplication 
of  the  materials  for  conjecture  and  speculation.  The  connec- 
tions between  science  and  religion  are  as  numerous,  extensive 
and  intricate  as  are  the  connections  between  the  Creator  and 
His  creation ;  and  as  we  shall  proceed  to  unfold  them  one 
after  another  in  their  due  order,  Nature  will  open  before  us 
in  all  her  infinite  variety  and  vicissitude  as  but  a  manifold 
revelation  of  Him  who  "hath  made  everything  beautiful  in  its 
time."  Devout  fancy,  now  soaring  up  amid  the  countless 
orbs  of  astronomy,  then  diving  down  amid  the  secret  atoms 
of  chemistry,  anon  wandering  back  through  the  teeming  ages 
of  Genesis,  at  length  hastening  on  to  the  ripening  glories  of 
the  Apocalypse,  will  find  herself  in  realms  of  fact  more  won- 


Dignity  of  Christian  Science.  23 

derful  than  any  realm  of  fiction;  the  sober  verities  of  religion 
will  outshine  the  most  splendid  fables  of  superstition ;  and  it 
shall  be  as  if  the  classic  Muses  were  following  in  the  train  of 
the  Christian  Graces  on  a  tour  of  the  creation  for  the  good  of 
the  creature  and  the  glory  of  the  Creator. 

And  there  will  be  added  to  all  this  the  high  moral  satisfac- 
tion with  which  we  witness  the  triumph  of  truth  over  error, 
right  over  wrong,  and  good  over  evil.  That  conflict  which  is 
raging  in  the  bosom  of  this  age  between  the  reason  of  man 
and  the  word  of  God,  and  which  is  yet  to  issue  practically  in 
the  predominance  of  a  Christian  civilization  over  heathen  bar- 
barism throughout  the  earth,  is  here  to  be  viewed  by  us  in  the 
calm  region  of  abstraction,  in  the  cool  mood  of  philosophy, 
and  in  the  clear  light  of  prophecy.  As  from  the  loop-holes 
of  a  retreat,  wherein  we  are  being  drilled  for  the  actual  war- 
fare, we  look  forth  on  a .  battle-field,  bounded  only  by  the 
horizon  of  thought,  covered  all  over  with  the  smoke  of  con- 
troversy, and  whereon -not  kings  and  peoples  alone,  but  great 
ideas  and  principles  are  struggling  for  the  mastery,  with  last- 
ing interests  of  humanity  staked  upon  the  issue;  and  as  we  see 
how  the  powers  of  light  are  steadily  gaining  on  the  powers  of 
darkness,  and  even  now  marshalling  to  victory,  we  may  share 
in  that  solemn  joy  which  the  great  master  of  English  philo- 
sophy utters  forth  in  the  name  of  the  seers  and  sages  of  all 
time :  "  It  is  a  pleasure  to  stand  on  the  shore  and  to  see  ships 
tossed  upon  the  sea;  a  pleasure  to  stand  in  the  window  of  a 
castle  and  to  see  a  battle  and  the  adventures  thereof  below; 
but  no  pleasure  is  comparable  to  the  standing  on  the  vantage- 
ground  of  truth  (a  hill  not  to  be  commanded,  and  where  the 
air  is  always  clear  and  serene,)  and  to  see  the  errors  and  wan- 
derings and  mists  and  tempests  in  the  vale  below;  so  always 
that  this  prospect  be  with  pity,  and  not  with  swelling  or  pride." 


PART  FIRST. 


THE   PHILOSOPHICAL  PARTIES 


THE   RELATIONS 


SCIENCE  AND    RELIGION. 


CHAPTER  I. 


EARLY  CONFLICTS  AND  ALLIANCES  BETWEEN 
SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 


At  the  close  of  our  introduction  we  stood  upon  an  imaginaiy 
eminence  of  faith  and  hope,  overlooking  the  vast  battle-field  of 
modern  philosophy.  Resuming  the  figure,  we  purpose  now 
to  review  the  motley  hosts  which  are  there  mustered  ;  to 
point  out  the  various  standards  under  which  they  are  mar- 
shalled ;  to  trace  their  changing  fortunes  over  the  field,  as  here 
they  are  seen  closing  in  the  deadly  grapple,  or  there  resting 
idly  upon  their  arms,  or  now  rushing  wildly  in  the  charge,  or 
anon  trailing  their  banners  in  the  dust ;  to  show  how  the  lines 
are  forming  for  a  last  decisive  struggle;  and  at  length  to 
gather  against  the  chances  of  defeat,  the  sure  presages  of  vic- 
tory. In  plainer  words,  the  next  few  chapters  will  be  devoted 
to  a  survey  of  the  present  state  of  parties  in  the  philosophical 
world  as  to  the  great  question  of  reconciling  Science  and  Re- 
ligion, with  a  glance  at  the  prospects  of  their  ultimate  har- 
mony. 

And  we  shall  begin  this  part  of  the  work  with  a  brief  his- 
torical sketch  of  the  causes  of  their  present  disturbed  relations, 
as  traceable  from  the  dawn  of  Greek  philosophy  to  the  Re- 
formation. It  is  only  by  thus  studying  the  past  that  we  may 
hope  to  understand  the  present  and  to  forecast  the  future. 
History  shows  us  especially,  that  great  intellectual  movements 
do  not  burst  upon  the  world  as  mere  happy  accidents  or  mi- 
racles, but  grow  rationally,  almost  intelligibly,  out  of  some 
existing  need  of  the  human  mind,  which  is  known  and  felt  by 

27 


28  Early  Conflicts  and  Alliances.  [part  i. 

the  few  long  before  it  is  seen  by  the  many ;  for  so  does  Provi- 
dence rule  mankind  in  order  and  reason.  And  if  this  be  true 
of  those  two  vast  reformations  in  Religion  and  Science  which 
we  now  ass^ociate  with  such  names  as  Luther  and  Bacon  and 
hail  as  the  wonders  of  our  own  era,  then  we  must  go  back  to 
the  times  when  they  first  sprang  into  view  and  even  to  the 
causes  which  for  centuries  before  had  been  secretly  and 
steadily  working  towards  them.  Only  by  this  means,  as  we 
shall  see,  can  we  trace  the  rise  of  that  great  schism  between 
human  and  divine  knowledge  and  consequent  anarchy  of 
opinions  and  interests  which  has  become  the  characteristic 
peril  of  modern  civilization. 

And  it  may  be  another  reason  for  such  a  review,  that  therein 
pre-eminently  will  history  appear  as  philosophy  teaching  by 
example.  If  we  are  sometimes  amused  by  turning  the  mis- 
takes of  antiquity  into  a  foil  to  modern  wisdom,  yet  we  can 
also  learn  from  them  that  we  are  ourselves  still  fallible,  and 
especially  as  to  this  very  class  of  questions.  Indeed,  no  more 
instructive  chapter  of  human  errors  could  be  written  than  that 
which  would  treat  of  the  collisions  between  the  religious  and 
scientific  classes  since  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era ;  nor 
could  we  have  a  better  moral  preparation  for  the  controversies 
still  pending  between  them  than  a  candid  study  of  those  which 
have  already  been  settled.  We  shall  see  Christian  fathers  re- 
jecting facts  which  heathen  philosophers  had  long  before  dis- 
covered, and  infidel  savants  scoffing  at  truths  which  pagan 
sages  yearned  to  have  revealed ;  and  if  we  need  to  remember 
that  such  models  of  orthodoxy  as  Augustine  and  Turrettin 
were  now  and  then  betrayed  into  false  science,  yet  we  should 
not  forget  that  such  masters  of  science  as  Kepler  and  Newton 
never  for  one  moment  swerved  from  true  religion. 

It  need  hardly  be  said,  that  these  mistakes  of  great  and  good 
men  of  the  past  will  be  recalled  in  no  invidious  spirit,  either 
towards  sound  theology  and  religion,  or  towards  true  philoso- 
phy and  science.  From  our  higher  point  of  view  we  may  now 
distinguish  the  virtues  of  individuals  from  the  faults  of  their 
times ;  the  truths  which  have  endured  from  the  errors  which 
have  passed  away.  Moreover,  even  a  defeated  party  can  af- 
ford to  smile  at  absurdities  which  it  has  outgrown,  when  it  is 


CHAP.  I.]        Conflicts  of  Philosophy  and  Mythology.  29 

seen  that  history  reverses  the  picture  against  its  antagonist, 
as  soon  as  it  is  viewed  from  the  other  side. 

Without  pretending  to  give  a  full  history  of  Religion  and 
Science  in  their  connection  with  the  leading  interests  of  civili- 
zation, it  will  be  enough  for  our  purpose  to  cull  a  few  exam- 
ples of  the  successive  conflicts  and  alliances  of  the  religious 
and  the  scientific  spirit,  the  theologic  and  the  philosophic 
mind,  as  they  will  appear,  according  to  a  natural  division  of 
time,  in  the  pre-Christian  and  post-Christian  ages  of  Pagan 
science,  and  the  Patristic,  Scholastic,  and  Reforming  ages  of 
Christian  science,  down  to  the  present  critical  epoch  of  de- 
cisive warfare  And  in  sketching  these  outlines  we  shall  en- 
deavor to  combine  the  views  of  such  historians  of  religion  as 
Neander,  Gieseler,  Schaff,  Matter,  D'Aubigne,  Millman ;  such 
historians  of  philosophy  as  Brucker,  Tenneman,  Cousin, 
Ueberweg,  Zeller,  Erdmann  ;  and  such  historians  of  literature 
and  civilization  as  Tiraboschi,  Sismondi,  Hallam,  Schlegel, 
Guizot,  Balmez  and  Draper. 

The  Pre-Christian  Age  of  Pagan  Science.     " 
(b.  c.  500). 

And  if  we  would  seek  the  first  signs  and  beginnings  of 
present  conflicts  we  must  go  back  to  the  age  of  Pagan  philoso- 
phy before  the  Christian  era.  It  is  true  that  science  was  then 
in  its  infancy  as  nursed  in  the  schools  of  Greece,  and  religion 
had  not  yet  come  forth  from*  its  divine  pupilage  in  Judea  ;  but 
certain  innate  or  traditional  elements  of  them  both  were 
already  active  in  the  existing  civilization,  and  the  inevitable 
strifes  of  coming  ages  were  dimly  foreshadowed  as  in  minia- 
ture, wherever  bigotry  could  array  itself  against  enlightenment, 
or  the  subtlety  of  knowledge  was  seen  corrupting  the  simpli- 
city of  faith. 

On  the  one  hand,  the  spirit  of  bigotry  had  begun  to  convert 
the  votaries  of  philosophy  into  proto-martyrs  of  science.  It 
was  this  spirit,  which  held  up  Socrates  to  public  odium  in  the 
comedy  of  Aristophanes  as  trying  to  chase  Jupiter  out  of  the 
heavens,  because  he  had  sought  to  explain  the  thunder  and 
lightning  of  tempests  by  a  theory  of  aerial  concussions,  and  at 
length,  for  his  alleged  contempt  of  the  gods,  condemned  him 


30  Pre-Christian  Pagan  Science.  [part  i. 

to  the  cup  of  hemlock.  It  was  this  spirit,  which  drove  Anaxa- 
goras  into  exile  for  teaching  that  the  god  of  day  was  but  a 
globe  of  fire,  and  an  eclipse  not  a  presage  of  the  wrath  of 
Apollo,  biit  the  shadow  of  a  passing  planet.  It  was  this 'spirit, 
which  accused  Aristarchus  of  sacrilegiously  attempting  to  re- 
move the  sacred  hearth  of  the  universe  by  supposing  in  order 
to  account  for  the  phenomena  of  the  seasons  that  the  earth 
might  be  in  motion  and  the  heavens  at  rest.  And  it  was  this 
spirit  which,  at  a  later  period,  led  Pliny  to  reflect  upon  HijDpar- 
chus,  the  father  of  Greek  astronomy,  as  having  invaded  the 
abode  of  the  gods  in  making  a  catalogue  of  the  stars. 

On  the  other  hand,  however,  the  spirit  of  sophistry  had  be- 
gun to  pervert  the  recreants  from  the  old  mythology  into 
prototypes  of  the  later  infidelity.  It  was  this  spirit  which 
bred  a  race  of  scoffing  sciolists  amid  the  altars  and  temples  of 
the  popular  faith,  and  at  length,  as  expressed  in  the  tragedies 
of  Euripides  and  by  the  arts  of  Alcibiades,  undermined  what- 
soever of  moral  and  religious  truth  still  lingered  in  the  ancient 
legends  and  laws.  It  was  this  spirit  which,  as  Plutarch  tells 
us,  even  whilst  offering  at  the  altar,  viewed  the  priest  as  but  a 
slaughtering  cook,  and  having  decorously  consulted  the  oracle 
retired  to  sneer  at  the  bad  poetry  of  its  responses.  It  was 
this  spirit  which,  in  the  age  of  Roman  satire,  ripened  into  such 
hypocrisy  that  Seneca  could  gravely  argue  that  divine  wor- 
ship was  due  only  to  good  manners,  whilst  'Cicero  declared 
that  two  augurs  could  not  look  each  othef  in  the  face  without 
laughing.  And  it  was  this  spirit  which,  at  length,  under  the 
philosophical  emperors,  degraded  the  priests  of  Jupiter  into 
ministers  of  the  senate,  and  collected  the  gods  of  the  provinces 
into  the  pantheon  as  mere  trophies  of  Caesar. 

By  the  time  the  Roman  rule  had  spread  over  the  known 
world,  such  prelusive  strifes  between  a  false  religion  and  a 
fahse  science  had  left  nothing  but  a  mass  of  outworn  supersti- 
tions and  fragmental  truths,  in  the  midst  of  which  philosophy 
sat  hopeless  and  unbelieving,  with  all  her  problems  as  yet 
unsolved. 


CHAP,  I.]       Conflicts  of  Cliristia7iity  and  Philosophy,  31 

The  Post-Christian  Age  of  Pagan  Science. 

(a.  d.  1-200.) 

When  Christianity  at  length  emerged  upon  the  stage  of 
Gentile  civilization,  religion  and  science  were  first  brought 
face  to  face  as  leading  powers  in  the  history  of  the  world,  and 
for  a  century  or  two  afterwards  each  seemed  striving  to  sup- 
plant the  other. 

On  the  side  of  Christianity,  there  was  at  first  an  apparent 
effort  to  supplant  Philosophy.  The  apostles  had  scarcely  left 
the  Church,  when  there  sprang  up,  in  the  unlettered  class  from 
which  the  first  Christians  had  been  largely  recruited,  a  weak 
jealousy  of  human  learning  which,  it  was  claimed,  had  been 
superseded  in  them  by  miraculous  gifts  of  wisdom  and  know- 
ledge. Clement  of  Rome  was  held  by  this  party  to  have  en- 
joined abstinence  from  mental  culture  as  one  of  the  apostolic 
canons;  Barnabas  and  Polycarp  were  classed  with  St.  Paul  as 
authors  of  epistles  which  carry  their  own  evidence  of  impos- 
ture; and  Hermas,  as  if  in  contempt  of  scholars,  put  his 
angelical  rhapsodies  in  the  mouth  of  a  shepherd. 

And  as  Christianity  came  in  closer  conflict  with  paganism, 
this  spirit  well  nigh  pervaded  the  apologetics  of  the  time. 
Philosophy  ofevery  kind  was  stigmatized  as  the  source  of  all 
error,  its  great  masters  branded  as  heresiarchs,  and  Christians 
exhorted  to  flee  from  the  Grove  and  the  Lyceum  into  the 
porch  of  Solomon.  "Away,"  cried  Tertullian,  "with  a  Stoic, 
and  a  Platonic,  and  a  Dialectic  Christianity."  We  know  that 
the  first  .apologist,  Justin,  who  strove  to  lead  the  school  of 
Plato  to  the  feet  of  Christ,-  could  not  quite  satisfy  those  whom 
he  was  defending  so  long  as  he  refused  to  doff  the  philoso- 
pher's mantle,  though  he  afterwards  added  to  it  the  martyr's 
crown.  And  Eusebius  tells  us  how  the  culture  of  logic  and 
geometry  came  to  be  placed  among  the  crimes  of  heretics,  of 
whom  it  was  complained  that  they  lost  sight  of  heaven  whilst 
employed  in  measuring  the  earth,  and  neglected  the  sacred 
writings  for  the  works  of  such  infidels  as  Euclid,  Aristotle, 
and  Galen. 

On  the  side  of  Philosophy,  however,  there  was  at  the  same 
time  a  like  effort  to  supplant  Christianity.     As  we  arc  told 


32  Post- Christian  Pagan  Science.  [part  i. 

by  the  apostles  themselves,  it  crept  into  the  very  fold  of  the 
Church,  corrupting  the  pure  gospel  with  an  eloquent  sophistry; 
or  from  beyond  its  pale  scornfully  assailed  it  with  the  wisdom 
of  the  world.  At  first,  indeed,  the  great  writers  of  the  age, 
Plutarch,  Seneca,  and  Tacitus,  deigned  not  even  to  notice  the 
new  religion  which  had  appeared  among  the  vulgar  crowd  of 
gods  which  for  ages  past  a  Protean  superstition  had  been 
accumulating,  or  only  alluded  to  it  distantly  as  a  fanatical 
folly  which  had  broken  out  in  a  corner  of  the  empire.  And 
even  after  its  rapid  spread  among  the  people  could  no  longer 
be  overlooked,  it  was  for  some  time  met  with  policy  and  satire 
rather  than  with  argument.  Pliny  the  younger,  whilst  admit- 
ting the  blameless  lives  of  the  Christians,  felt  obliged  to  treat 
them  as  visionary  disturbers  of  the  peace;  the  witty  Lucian 
passed  by  an  easy  sneer  from  the  tricks  of  the  magicians  to 
the  miracles  of  the  apostles ;  and  Celsus  poured  all  the  con- 
tempt of  aristocratic  culture  upon  the  humbling  doctrines  and 
homely  virtues  of  the  crucified  peasant  of  Nazareth. 

But  as  the  philosophy  of  the  age  became  more  aware  of  the 
exclusive  claims  of  Christianity,  there  was  a  last  grand  rally 
of  all  the  schools  against  the  rude  teachers  from  Galilee. 
The  knowledge  of  the  East  and  the  wisdom  of  the  West, 
Gnosticism  and  Platonism,  were  woven  together  in  the  Neo- 
Platonism  of  Amnonius  Saccas,  as  the  one  eclectic  creed 
of  reason,  and  the  austere  Plotinus  put  forward  as  superior  to 
any  of  the  Christian  models  of  virtue  and  devotion.  Porphyry, 
having  wrought  the  system  through  the  polytheistic  legends, 
adroitly  strove  to  match  the  Hebrew  prophecies  with  the 
Heathen  oracles;  and  Hierocles  aimed  to  finish  the  caricature 
by  exhibiting  Apollonius  of  Tyana,  a  wonder-working  demi- 
god of  the  Greeks,  as  the  equal  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  the  new 
miracle-working  hero  of  the  Jews.  When,  however,  Justin,  as 
a  convert  from  their  own  ranks,  was  seen  sitting  in  the  Plato- 
nic cloak  at  the  feet  of  Christ,  their  disdain  was  quickly 
changed  to  hatred  and  persecution.  What  had  been  already 
hinted  in  the  writings  of  the  philosophers  was  commanded 
from  the  throne  of  the  emperors,  and  the  Coliseum  echoed 
with  the  fierce  shouts  of  the  populace  as,  year  after  year, 
Christian  martyrs  were  thrown  to  the  lions. 


CHAP.  I.]         Alliance  of  Tlicology  and  PJiilosopJiy.  33 

It  was  not  until  the  union  of  Church  and  State  under  Con- 
stantine  that  these  bitter  conflicts  passed  away,  and  Philosophy 
and  Christianity  at  length  joined  hands,  on  their  first  battle- 
ground, in  the  schools  of  Alexandria. 

The  Patristic  Age  of  Christian  Science. 
(a.  d.  200—700.) 

In  the  age  of  the  Greek  fathers,  there  was  a  false  peace  be- 
tween theology  and  philosophy;  and  religion  and  science,  in 
consequence,  became  more  or  less  corrupted  by  admixture 
with  each  other. 

Theology,  on  its  part,  became  corrupted  through  its  rash 
alliance  with  the  old  philosophy.  The  doctrines  of  St.  John 
were  sublimated  into  the  abstractions  of  Plato ;  the  Son  of 
God  was  identified  as  the  divine  Logos  of  the  schools  ;  and 
the  high  mysteries  of  the  trinity,  the  incarnation,  and  the 
atonement,  were  couched  under  abstruse  distinctions  of  meta- 
physics. Justin  Martyr,  in  his  Apologies,  had  already  wrested 
from  Platonism  as  much  of  its  ethics  and  theism  as  it  had  in 
common  with  Christianity.  Clement  of  Alexandria  in  his 
Stromata,  proceeded  to  unfold  out  of  such  seeds  of  natural 
reason  the  more  perfect  truths  of  revelation,  and  to  weave  be- 
hind the  popular  Christianity  the  elements  of  faith  into  a  sys- 
tem of  knowledge.  Origen  by  his  allegorical  interpretation 
forced  a  hidden  sense  of  Scripture  which,  as  the  kernel  of  the 
Word,  should  express  the  occult  system  of  Clement.  And 
thenceforward  followed  a  line  of  Greek  fathers  in  the  East, 
such  as  Eusebius,  Athanasius,  Basil,  the  two  Gregories, 
Chrysostom  and  the  two  Cyrils,  who  did  scarcely  more  than 
consecrate  the  spirit  of  the  Academy  in  the  cloisters  and  coun- 
cils of  the  Church.  The  chief  exceptions  were  among  the 
Latin  fathers  of  the  West,  such  as  Irenaeus,  Tertullian,  and 
Cyprian,  who  from  the  first  had  resisted  the  philosophical  ten- 
dency, and  Lactantius,  Jerome,  and  Augustine,  who  led  the 
way  more  or  less  consciously  to  the  system  of  Aristotle,  as 
that  of  Plato  was  on  the  wane. 

Philosophy  itself,  meanwhile,  became  not  less  corrupted 
through  its  forced  alliance  with  the  new  theology.  If  it 
gained  somewhat  on  its  metaphysical  side  by  having  its  own 


34  Patristic  Christian  Science.  [part  i. 

notional  entities  traced  up  to  revealed  realities  as  the  flower 
from  the  germ  of  reason,  yet  it  lost  quite  as  much  on  its  phy- 
sical side,  through  a  narrowing  logic  and  exegesis  which  bound 
it  within  the  letter  of  Scripture  and  turned  it  away  from  all 
empirical  research ;  and  consequently  even  such  crude  natural 
science  as  it  had  inherited  from  the  early  Greeks  was  soon 
forgotten  or  buried  under  a  mass  of  patristic  traditions.  In 
geology  the  speculations  of  Thales,  Anaximenes,  and  Hera- 
clitus,  tracing  the  growth  of  the  world  from  water,  air,  or  fire, 
were  only  exchanged  for  the  fanciful  allegories  and  homilies 
of  Origen,  Basil,  and  Ambrose  on  the  Hexaemeron  or  six 
days'  work  of  creation.  In  astronomy  the  heliocentric  views 
of  Aristarchus  and  Pythagoras  had  already  given  place  to  the 
Ptolemaic  theory  of  the  heavens,  as  a  system  of  crystalline 
spheres  revolving  around  the  earth ;  and  the  theologian  thus 
left  free  to  think  of  man  as  the  moral  pivot  of  the  universe, 
could  easily  reconcile  the  theory  with  Scripture.  According 
to  the  Orthodox  Catechism  attributed  to  Justin  Martyr,  the 
chamber  or  canopy  of  the  heavens,  described  in  the  Psalms,  is 
formed  by  a  huge  globe  or  dome  of  glass  which  rests  upon 
the  waters  flowing  around  the  earth  which  in  its  turn,  as  Job 
declares,  is  hung  upon  nothing.  St.  Chrysostom,  or  perhaps 
Severian,  a  turgid  orator  mistaken  for  the  "  golden-mouthed 
preacher,"  explained  that  the  setting  sun  did  not  go  under- 
neath and  around  the  earth,  according  to  the  pagan  notion; 
but  passed  obliquely  below  the  horizon,  and  thus,  as  Solomon 
says,  hasted  back  to  the  place  whence  he  arose. 

In  geography  the  corruption  of  natural  knowledge  with 
false  Biblical  views  became  even  more  remarkable,  and  the 
doctrine  of  the  earth's  rotundity  and  antipodes  which  had  been 
held  by  both  Plato  and  Aristotle,  and  all  but  proved  by  the 
Alexandrian  geometers,  was  at  length  discarded  as  a  fable  not 
less  monstrous  than  heretical.  St.  Jerome,  in  commenting 
upon  the  living  wheels  in  Ezekiel's  vision,  speaks  of  a 
foolish  conceit  of  philosophers  that  there  are  two  hemis- 
pheres whose  inhabitants  stand  with  feet  opposite,  like  the 
cherubim  in  the  temple.  Lactantius,  the  Christian  Cicero, 
departing  in  this  matter  from  his  model,  classed  the 
notion  of  a   peopled   globe  among   the  vagaries  of  a  false 


CHAP.  I.]       Blended  Pagan  and  Christian  Culture. 


35 


science,  and  ridiculed  such  new  wonders  of  the  world  as 
hanging  gardens,  climbing  rivers,  and  inverted  men  walking 
beneath  us,  like  shadows  in  the  water.  Even  Augustine, 
though  he  cautiously  granted  the  spherical  figure  of  the  earth, 
denied  the  existence  of  antipodes  as  contrary  to  the  Scrip- 
ture doctrine  of  the  first  Adam,  the  descent  of  races  from 
one  pair  being  physically  impossible  were  such  unknown  re- 
gions beyond  the  seas  inhabited  by  man.  So  inwrought  with 
these  fancies  did  the  theological  mind  become,  that  one  Cos- 
mas  Indicopleustes,  an  Alexandrian  monk  of  the  sixth  century, 
at  length  set  forth  a  standard  Biblical  geography,  "Topo- 
graphia  Christiana,"  in  which,  after  mapping  the  earth  as  an 
oblong  plain,  bounded  by  trough-like  seas,  covered  with  a 
crystal  roof,  and  having  a  mountain  range  in  the  back  ground, 
behind  which  the  sun  was  hid  at  night,  he  proceeded  to  cite 
patriarchs,  prophets,  and  apostles  in  its  defence,  as  doctrine 
concerning  which  it  was  not  lawful  for  a  Christian  to  doubt. 

At  the  same  time,  all  the  issuing  interests  of  this  pagan- 
ized Christianity  could  not  but  share  in  its  hybrid  character. 
Its  piety  became  but  a  mixture  of  austerity  and  license.  An- 
thony, the  father  of  asceticism,  led  forth  from  the  luxury  of 
the  city  and  the  court  a  crowd  of  anchorites  to  the  caves  and 
deserts  of  Egypt;  Pachomius,  the  founder  of  the  cloister  life, 
organized  monasteries  and  nunneries  as  sanctuaries  of  virtue 
amid  a  social  corruption  too  gross  to  be  described ;  and 
Simeon,  the  Stylite,  stood  for  thirty  years  upon  his  lofty 
column  above  the  surrounding  worldliness  as  a  model  to  after 
ages  of  penance  and  mortification.  Its  ritual  was  a  mere 
medley  of  incongruous  usages.  The  sign  of  the  cross  became 
a  common  charm,  as  well  as  a  sacred  rite ;  the  Lord's  day 
was  observed  by  imperial  edict,  on  a  day  devoted  to  the  god 
of  the  sun;  and  Christian  worship  was  celebrated  in  Greek 
and  Roman  basilicas,  whose  interior  was  after  the  pattern  of 
the  Jewish  synagogue.  And  its  polity  was  little  more  than  a 
compact  of  churchly  pride  and  civil  rule.  Grand  ecclesiasti- 
cal councils  were  convoked  as  organs  of  the  Holy  Ghost  by 
the  decrees  of  emperors,  with  pomp  and  sometimes  with  tu- 
mult; Christian  and  Pagan  factions  contended  for  supremacy 
in    the  Roman  Senate ;  and  only  ten  years  after  the  eagles 


36  Scholastic  Christian  Science.  [part  i. 

of  Constantine  had  carried  the  cross  throughout  the  empire; 
Juhan,  the  Apostate,  was  impiously  rebuilding  the  altars  of 
Apollo  and  the  temple  of  Solomon. 

The  Patristic  type  of  Christian  science  has  been  likened  to 
a  twilight  dream  of  thought  before  the  long  night  watches  of 
the  middle  ages.  It  passed  away  with  the  Byzantine  empire, 
of  which  it  was  the  setting  glory,  and  there  ensued,  during  a 
chaotic  period  of  several  centuries,  as  elements  of  another 
culture,  the  descent  of  the  Germanic  tribes  with  the  new 
blood  of  the  North,  the  rise  of  Charlemagne  with  the  great 
schools  of  the  West,  and  the  inroads  of  the  Saracens  with  the 
lost  learning  of  the  East. 


The  Scholastic  Age  of  Christian  Science, 
(a.  d.  700-1400.) 

In  the  age  of  the  schoolmen,  the  truce  existing  between 
theology  and  philosophy  gave  place  to  a  bondage,  and  the 
one  grew  so  strong  and  the  other  so  weak,  that  there  could 
be  as  little  of  fair  strife  as  of  free  alliance  between  them. 

Theology,  in  course  of  time,  grew  strong  enough  to  sub- 
jugate philosophy.  It  made  the  Church  the  only  school ; 
orthodoxy,  the  one  test  of  all  truth;  the  traditions  of  the 
fathers,  the  sole  pabulum  of  the  intellect;  and  the  system  of 
Aristotle,  a  mere  frame-work  to  the  creed  of  Augustine.  But 
it  was  not  by  one  stride  that  it  reached  the  throne. 

There  was  first  a  long  period  of  transition,  from  the  seventh 
to  the  tenth  century,  when  the  free  Platonic  spirit  still  lingered, 
as  in  John  Scotus  Erigena,  the  Erin-born  Scot,  who  in  the 
midst  of  surrounding  barbarism  boldly  dreamed  of  a  universal 
philosophy,  as  Charlemagne  had  dreamed  of  a  universal  em- 
pire, to  be  wrought  out  of  the  wrecks  of  former  systems. 

There  followed,  during  the  eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries, 
the  forming  period  of  scholasticism,  when  its  first  disciples 
were  gathered  by  Lanfranc  in  the  great  Norman  Abbey  of 
Bee.  Anselm  of  Canterbury,  the  second  St.  Augustine,  an- 
nounced its  leading  principle  by  placing  faith  before  know- 
ledge, and  confining  reason  within  the  bounds  of  revelation. 
Peter  Lombard,  the  Master  of  Sentences,  narrowed  still  more 


CHAP.  I.]  Predominance  of  Theology.  37 

the  circle  of  free  thought  by  putting  the  authority  of  the 
Church  above  that  of  Scripture,  and  digesting  the  conflicting 
opinions  of  the  fathers  as  the  only  problems  of  right  reason ; 
and  Alexander  of  Hales,  the  Irrefragable  Doctor,  rendered 
the  thraldom  of  the  intellect  complete  by  systematizing  the 
patristic  traditions  or  sentences  with  the  Aristotelian  logic, 
and  condensing  them  into  the  first  Summary  of  Theology  or 
body  of  divinity. 

Then  came  the  crowning  epoch  of  scholasticism,  in  the 
thirteenth  century,  when  its  grandest  doctors  flourished. 
Albert  the  Great,  the  Universal  Doctor,  wrought  the  whole 
Aristotelian  system  of  philosophy  into  the  theological 
cyclopaedia,  with  a  voluminous  erudition  which  amazed  his 
age.  Thomas  Aquinas,  the  Angelical  Doctor,  distilled  the 
huge  learned  compound  into  brilliant  syllogisms,  with  a  trans- 
cendent genius  which  dazzled  all  Europe,  and  made  him  the 
very  idol  of  the  schools.  Duns  Scotus,  the  Subtle  Doctor,  pro- 
ceeded to  evaporate  the  distinctions  of  Aquinas,  before  thou- 
sands of  students,  in  a  jargon  which  defies  modern  compre- 
hension ;  and  a  host  of  other  great  doctors  with  lofty  titles, 
the  Enlightened,  the  Profound,  the  Sublime,  the  Perspicuous, 
the  Solemn,  paced  the  same  beaten  walk  of  the  Stagyrite 
round  about  Zion. 

And,  at  the  same  time,  into  the  service  of  this  arid  ortho- 
doxy seems  to  have  been  pressed  all  else  that  was  good  and 
great  in  human  nature.  It  claimed  among  its  fruits  the  highest 
types  of  virtue  and  piety,  Bernard  of  Clairvaux,  the  Mel- 
lifluous Doctor,  threw  over  it  the  charm  of  a  saintly  eloquence 
blended  with  a  knightly  valor  in  its  defence;  Hugo  and 
Richard,  the  mystics  of  St.  Victor,  retired  with  it  from  the 
strife  of  the  schools  into  the  reveries  of  the  cloister ;  and 
Bonaventura,  the  Seraphic  Doctor,  mounted  by  means  of  it 
towards  the  very  heaven  of  rapt  devotion.  It  summoned  all 
the  arts  to  its  embellishment.  Raphael,  as  with  the  pencil 
of  an  archangel,  portrayed  its  ideals  of  heavenly  purity  and 
grace ;  Michael  Angelo  embodied  in  architecture  the  mag- 
nificent monuments  of  its  intellectual  energy ;  and  Dante  wove 
into  verse  the  gorgeous  legends,  which,  like  sunset  clouds, 
illumined  its  very  decline.     And  it  was  attended  in  its  career 


38  Scholastic  Christian  Science.  [part.  i. 

by  every  form  of  pomp  and  grandeur.  Its  harsh  dialectics 
had  the  tournaments  of  chivalry  for  a  gay  foreground,  and 
issued  in  the  splendid  romance  of  the  crusades ;  its  prodigious 
lore  flowered  into  a  ritual  which,  it  was  said,  the  inhabitants  of 
heaven  might  envy,  if  envy  could  enter  their  minds;  and  its 
stern  decrees  were  executed  by  a  monarch  who  had  made 
the  throne  of  the  Caesars  his  footstool,  and  before  whom 
kings  with  their  peoples  quailed  as  the  vice-gerent  of  God. 

Philosophy,  however,  during  all  these  centuries,  could  only 
succumb  to  theology.  At  the  beginning  of  scholasticism,  in 
the  person  of  her  first  votary,  she  had  been  forced  to  yield  to 
the  strong  arm  of  the  hierarchy,  when  John  Scotus  Erigena, 
for  attempting  to  re-unite  Platonism  and  Christianity,  had 
been  anathematized  by  Nicholas  I.  as  a  pantheist  and  driven 
into  exile  at  Oxford.  And  thereafter  her  whole  domain  had 
been  fenced  out  of  the  Church  as  mere  profane  learning,  or  in- 
vaded only  to  be  conquered,  until  every  province  was  reduced 
to  the  most  abject  subservience. 

In  Logic  the  dialectic  of  Aristotle  was  indeed  used,  but  used 
only  upon  the  set  problems  of  orthodoxy,  and  any  deflection 
in  mere  form  as  well  as  matter  was  enough  to  draw  down 
the  anathemas  of  the  Church.  Roscelin  of  Compiegne,  the 
founder  of  the  sect  of  nominalists,  who  held  that  universal 
ideas  are  but  words,  was  arraigned  as  a  tritheist,  and  only  es- 
caped death  by  recantation.  William  of  Champeaux,  the 
founder  of  the  sect  of  realists,  who  held  the  opposite  theory 
that  universal  ideas  are  the  only  realities,  was  pursued  in  de- 
bate as  a  pantheist,  until  he  retired  discomfited  from  the  schools 
of  Paris ;  and  Peter  Abelard,  the  proud  lover  of  Eloise  and 
great  dialectical  champion  of  Christendom,  who  had  vanquished 
both  of  these  disputants,  having  at  length,  in  his  "Sic  et  Non," 
dared  to  exhibit  the  problems  of  faith  as  paradoxes  of  reason, 
was  forced  to  cast  his  own  works  into  the  fire,  and  condemned 
to  obscurity  and  silence.  To  such  an  extent  did  these  mere 
logomachies  prevail  that  for  centuries  afterwards  the  schools 
were  rent  with  their  feuds,  and  Europe  was  at  length  con- 
vulsed with  bloody  wars  and  persecutions. 

In  Metaphysics  the  system  of  Aristotle  was  allowed,  but 
only  in  subordination  to  the  traditional  divinity,  and  any  specu- 


CHAP.  I.]  Subjitgation  of  Philosophy.  39 

lations  deviating  from  that  standard  were  watched  with  the 
most  jealous  scrutiny.  Almaric  of  Bcna,  having  advanced 
views  bordering,  as  it  was  supposed,  upon  pantheism,  was  ex- 
pelled from  his  chair  in  the  University  of  Paris.  David  of 
Dinanto,  a  pupil  of  Almaric,  who  went  farther  than  his  mas- 
ter, was  likewise  degraded,  and  his  writings  and  followers  de- 
livered over  to  the  civil  arm.  And  when  it  was  discovered,  to 
the  consternation  of  the  Church,  that  these  heresies  had  been 
imbibed  from  certain  works  of  Aristotle,  which  had  drifted 
into  Europe  from  Arabia  on  the  ebbing  tide  of  the  Crusades, 
that  great  master  himself  was  for  a  time  arraigned  and  his 
metaphysics  forbidden  from  the  very  council  of  the  Lateran. 
It  was  not  until  the  system  had  been  purged  of  its  Arabian 
glosses  and  brought  into  complete  subjection  to  the  faith  by 
the  greater  schoolmen  who  came  afterwards,  such  as  Albert 
and  Aquinas,  that  these  suspicions  were  allayed  and  the  Sta- 
gyrite  at  length  admitted  to  the  seat  of  Augustine  as  "the 
Philosopher"  pre-eminent  in  the  schools. 

In  Physics,  except  so  far  as  they  also  could  be  summed  up 
in  the  Church  cyclopaedia,  there  remained  nought  but  the  for- 
bidden arts  of  magic  and  sorcery ;  and  the  soundest  divines,  if 
addicted  to  them,  could  not  escape  the  dark  imputation. 
Sylvester  II.,  a  renowned  physicist  of  the  tenth  century  who 
had  studied  Aristotle  in  the  Moorish  schools  of  Cordova,  was 
universally  believed  to  have  won  St.  Peter's  chair  through  a 
compact  with  the  prince  of  darkn'ess,  and  the  legend  long  ran, 
that  his  tomb  exuded  with  moisture  and  the  bones  rattled 
within,  whenever  a  Pope  was  about  to  die.  Simon  of  Tour- 
nay,  a  popular  lecturer  of  the  thirteenth  century  who  excelled 
in  chemistry  and  natural  philosophy,  was  charged  by  the 
monks  with  having  been  smitten  with  palsy  for  his  profane 
temerity.  And  even  Albert  the  Great,  for  his  physical  studies, 
rested  under  like  suspicions,  so  terrifying  Thomas  Aquinas 
with  a  speaking  automaton  that  the  angel  of  the  schools  broke, 
it  in  pieces  with  his  staff  as  a  very  work  of  the  devil.  Peter 
D'Abano,  styled  the  Conciliator  for  his  attempt  to  harmonize 
the  physical  sciences  with  philosophy,  was  condemned  as  a 
sorcerer  and  heretic  while  he  was  yet  dying,  and  then  burned 
in  ef^gy,  his  body  having  been  secreted  from  the  impotent 


40  Scholastic  CJiristian  Science.  [part  i. 

rage  of  his  persecutors.  Even  as  late  as  the  fifteenth  century 
there  appeared  a  learned  apology,  by  the  French  writer 
Naude,  for  all  the  great  men  suspected  of  the  black  art,  among 
whom  were  named  the  leading  physicists  of  the  middle- ages. 
With  Logic  thus  debased  into  sophistry,  with  Metaphysics 
swallowed  up  in  mere  dogmatic  divinity,  and  with  Physics 
left  growing  wild  beyond  the  pale  of  the  Church,  it  was  not 
strange  that  each  of  the  sciences  became  overrun  with  the 
rankest  weeds  of  superstition  and  error.  Mathematics  lan- 
guished into  a  kind  of  mystical  arithmetic  and  geometry, 
stigmatized  as  magic,  until  revived  by  the  infidels  of  Arabia. 
Astronomy  relapsed  beyond  the  earliest  Greek  science  towards 
Eastern  astrology  and  was  more  busy  in  calculating  nativities 
than  eclipses.  Chemistry  wandered  off  with  Mohammedan 
alchemy  in  search  of  the  elixir  of  health  and  the  philosopher's 
stone.  Geography  was  still  bounded  by  the  narrow  horizon 
of  Christendom,  and  held  the  antipodes  to  be  mere  heathen 
monsters  of  which  a  Christian  ought  not  even  to  speak. 
Natural  history,  except  as  it  survived  in  the  works  of  the 
Aristotelian  Albert,  had  been  freed  from  the  fauns,  and  naiads 
and  dryads  of  antiquity  only  to  become  infested  with  dragons, 
elves,  and  goblins  little  removed  from  the  fetichism  of  savage 
tribes.  Psychology,  if  it  had  acquired  a  spiritual  hierarchy  of 
saints  and  angels  rivalling  the  classical  gods  and  heroes,  yet 
retained  with  them  a  mass  of  legends,  relics,  and  impostures 
of  which  a  heathen  philosopher  would  have  been  ashamed. 
Sociology,  in  passing  from  Pagan  to  Christian  Rome,  had  but 
unfolded  a  theocracy  before  which  the  claims  of  the  Pharaohs 
and  the  Caesars  would  together  have  paled  into  impotence. 
And  even  theology,  under  the  full  blaze  of  revelation,  had  ad- 
mitted a  Queen  of  Heaven  to  her  throne,  and  to  her  altars,  a 
sacrifice  of  which  the  wildest  mythology  had  not  dreamed. 

The  scholastic  type  of  Christian  science  contained  the  seeds 
of  its  own  dissolution,  and  at  length  broke  in  twain,  together 
with  the  great  Roman  hierarchy  which  upheld  it.  With  its 
decline  came  the  revival  of  letters,  the  rise  of  the  inductive 
logic,  the  revolt  of  reason  from  authority,  the  growth  of  free 
institutions,  and  the  ascendancy  of  the  industrial  spirit,  as  the 
main  causes  of  our  modern  culture. 


CHAP.  I .]  TJic  Rupture  bctivccn  Science  and  Religion.         41 

The  Reforming  Age  of  Christian  Science. 
(a.  d.  1400— 1900.) 

In  the  age  of  the  reformers,  the  long  bondage  of  theology 
and  philosophy  burst  into  a  rupture,  the  one  assailing  and  the 
other  recoiling,  until  both  science  and  religion  have  been 
brought  to  bay  in  our  own  times  as  for  a  last  pitched  battle. 
We  must  trace  these  antagonistic  movements  separately  from 
their  remote  beginnings  in  the  previous  age  towards  their  ex- 
treme results  in  our  own  day. 

Theology  was  the  first  to  take  the  offensive,  and  assail 
philosophy.  She  had  indeed,  as  St.  Clement  declared,  only 
admitted  that  pagan  stranger  as  a  Hagar  into  the  household 
of  faith  and,  now  that  the  subtle  handmaid  was  becoming  a 
rival,  hastened  to  drive  her  back  into  the  wilderness.  Long 
before  Protestantism  had  a  name,  the  first  risings  of  the  philo- 
sophic spirit,  in  the  speculations  of  John  Scotus  and  Almaric, 
had  been  discerned,  as  if  with  jealous  foreboding,  and  bitterly 
resisted.  As  early  as  the  thirteenth  century,  the  great  friar 
Bacon,  whose  physical  experiments  and  speculations  might  all 
but  eclipse  his  more  famous  namesake,  but  who  only  terrified 
his  own  age  as  the  Wizard  Doctor,  after  vainly  protesting 
against  the  reigning  intolerance  in  his  treatise  on  the  Nullity 
of  Diabolical  Magic,  had  been  forced  to  spend  the  last  ten 
years  of  his  life  within  the  dungeons  of  Paris ;  and  Raymond 
Lully,  the  Enlightened  Doctor  and  Great  Inventor  of  the  Arts, 
who  strove  to  reorganize  the  whole  Christian  science  of  the 
time  and  enlist  it  in  a  grand  logical  crusade  against  heathen 
error,  after  encountering  the  contempt  of  Christendom,  had 
fallen  a  martyr  to  his  wild  dream  among  the  ]\Ioors  of  Africa. 
In  the  fourteenth  century,  Durand  of  Clermont,  the  Most 
Resolute  Doctor,  who  dared  to  introduce  into  the  schools  a 
general  independence  of  sects,  authorities,  and  systems,  had 
been  treated  as  an  apostate  by  the  brethren  of  his  ov/n  order ; 
and  William  of  Occam,  the  Invincible  Doctor,  who  revived 
the  long-forbidden  logic  of  Roscelin,  and  braved  the  whole 
scholastic  class  with  an  ironical  scepticism,  as  well  as  by  revo- 
lutionary appeals  to  princes  and  people,  had  fled  over  Europe 
everywhere  persecuted  but  not  destroyed.     And  at  length,  to- 


42  Reformed  Cliristian  Science.  [part  i. 

wards  the  close  of  the  fifteenth  century,  the  disciples  of  Du- 
rand  and  Occam,  by  papal  and  royal  edicts,  had  been  expelled 
from  the  universities  of  France  and  forced  into  alliance  with 
the  followers  of  Luther  and  Melancthon  in  Germany,  it  was 
not  strange,  therefore,  in  such  a  state  of  parties,  that  a  gen- 
eral persecution  should  have  been  enkindled,  not  merely 
against  the  divines  who  were  reforming  religion,  but  also 
against  any  philosophers  who  were  emancipating  science. 
History  shows  us  at  this  time,  here  and  there,  a  martyr  of  the 
revived  school  of  Plato.  Pico  of  Mirandola,  the  Phcenix  of 
the  Age,  who  convoked  a  grand  philosophical  council  at 
Rome,  and  all  but  sacrificed  his  coronet  to  his  piety,  was 
everywhere  calumniated  as  a  sorcerer  and  fanatic  and  driven 
to  a  premature  grave.  Peter  Ramus,  who  rose  from  the  posi- 
tion of  a  servant  to  that  of  a  professor  in  the  College  of  Na- 
varre, and  whose  "Ne\y;  Logic,"  as  afterwards  edited  by  our 
own  Milton,  became  a  text-book  throughout  Europe,  was 
harassed  for  years  in  his  chair,  banished,  and  at  last  brutally 
slain  in  the  massacre  of  St.  Bartholemew.  And  Giordano 
Bruno,  the  .guest  of  Sir  Philip  Sydney,  the  critic  of  Shakspere 
and  the  friend  of  Luther,  an  academic  knight-errant  who  be- 
came pupil  and  master  by  turns  in  all  the  schools,  was  ex- 
pelled as  a  heretic  from  Geneva  and  burned  as  an  atheist  at 
Rome.  At  the  same  time,  there  were  not  wanting  martyrs  of 
the  reformed  school  of  Aristotle.  Bernardin  Telesius,  a  great 
Italian  thinker,  who  was  the  first  to  attack  the  scholastic  logic 
in  a  Baconian  spirit,  was  pursued  with  calumnies  which  has- 
tened his  death,  and  afterwards  canonized  only  in  the  Index 
Expurgatorius  of  the  Inquisition.  Julius  Vanini,  a  paradoxical 
freethinker,  as  he  has  been  called,  whose  "Amphitheatre  of 
Providence"  had  been  avowedly  written  against  atheism,  was 
himself  condemned  as  an  atheist  to  the  flames,  and  has  not 
yet  recovered  from  the  infamy  of  his  fate.  And  Thomas  Cam- 
panella,  a  contemporary  of  Bacon,  whose  reform  he  antici- 
pated, and  of  Galileo,  whom  he  defended  from  a  dungeon,  was 
seven  times  tortured  and  immured  in  more  than  fifty  different 
prisons. 

But  it  was  when  these  new  philosophical  doctrines  began 
to  penetrate  among  the   more  practical   investigators  of  the 


CHAP.   I.]  TJic  Assault  of  Theology.  43 

several  sciences,  and  to  show  their  fruits  in  the  grand  dis- 
coveries of  modern  times,  that  the  parties,  as  it  were,  came 
into  close  quarters,  and  the  most  bitter  conflicts  ensued.  The- 
ology by  this  time  had  become  rash  enough  to  forsake  the 
vantage-ground  in  her  own  domain,  and  pursue  her  antagonist 
into  a  region  of  irresistible  facts,  where  her  war  of  dialectical 
notions  could  no  longer  be  waged,  and  she  was  sure  to  meet 
only  with  repulse. 

Geography  was  the  field  on  which  the  first  of  these  battles 
was  fought.  Since  the  days  of  Cosmas,  in  the  sixth  century, 
it  had  been  the  orthodox  faith  that  the  earth  was  a  sea-girt 
plain,  beyond  which  no  mortal  could  pass ;  and  when  in  the 
eighth  centuiy  Polydore  Virgil  of  Ireland  had  revived  the 
pagan  notion  of  antipodal  races  on  the  other  side  of  the  globe, 
all  Christendom  rang  with  the  quarrel.  Boniface,  the  Apostle 
of  Germany,  found  it  inconsistent  with  his  scheme  of  missions 
to  imagine  in  such  a  nether  world  other  heathen  than  those 
to  whom  he  was  preaching  the  gospel,  and  invoked  a  missive 
from  Pope  Zachaiy,  which  put  the  dangerous  heresy  at  rest. 
But,  now  that  bold  voyagers  from  Spain  were  actually  seeking 
new  lands  beyond  the  seas  and  sailing  to  the  West  in  hope  of 
returning  from  the  East,  it  seemed  that  the  very  anger  of 
Heaven  had  been  defied.  Columbus,  after  vainly  pressing  his 
suit  from  one  royal  court  to  another,  had  at  length  to  embark 
for  the  new  world  with  the  Council  of  Salamanca  invoking  the 
anathemas  of  patriarchs,  prophets,  apostles,  and  fathers  upon 
his  impious  daring.  Magellan,  as  he  sailed  through  the  straits 
and  beneath  the  stars,  which  still  bear  his  name,  over  the  wide 
Pacific,  could  only  solace- himself  amid  the  horrors  of  the  long 
voyage  by  reflecting,  that,  though  the  fathers  held  the  earth  to 
be  flat,  yet  her  shadow  in  the  moon's  eclipse  was  round,  and 
after  incredible  hardships  at  last  fell  a  martyr  in  sight  of  his 
goal.  And  even  when  the  grand  discovery  was  complete,  the 
new  hemisphere  was  but  claimed  as  a  conquered  domain  of 
the  Church,  and  its  helpless  tribes  with  their  crude  civilization 
exterminated  as  out  of  the  pale  of  the  Adamic  races. 

Astronomy  next  opened  a  still  wider  and  more  hotly-con- 
tested field.  It  had  been  taught  from  the  time  of  Justin  Mar- 
tyr, that  the  crystalline  heavens  revolved  around  the  solid 


44  Reformed  Christian  Science.  [part  i. 

earth,  forming  thus  a  wonderful  camera  for  the  abode  of  man ; 
and  though,  in  the  fifteenth  century,  the  Pythagorean  doctrine 
of  the  solar  system  had  been  recalled  by  Nicholas  of  Cusa,  yet 
in  the  absence  of  any  proof,  it  had  been  dismissed  as  an  ex- 
ploded error  of  antiquity ;  and  even  after  mathematical  rea- 
sonings had  been  advanced  at  a  later  period,  by  the  great 
Nicholas  Copernicus,  in  his  treatise  on  the  "  Revolutions  of 
the  Celestial  Orbs,"  the  hypothesis,  as  it  was  called,  had  been 
actually  allowed  for  half  a  century  in  the  universities  of  Italy 
as  a  sort  of  paradox  of  science  not  likely  to  disturb  the  popu- 
lar faith.  But  now  that  the  telescope  of  Galileo  was  affording 
sensible  evidence  of  the  motions  of  planets  and  satellites 
around  the  sun,  and  his  "Sidereal  Messenger,"  announcing 
the  grand  discovery  to  the  whole  world,  it  seemed  to  the 
guardians  of  the  Church  that  the  very  earth  was  about  to  be 
torn  reeling  from  its  centre,  and  all  men's  opinions  revolu- 
tionized with  it.  Cardinal  Bellarmine,  the  General  of  the  In- 
quisition, at  the  head  of  a  council  of  theologians,  pronounced 
the  Copernican  theory  heretical  and  false,  and  Pope  Paul  V. 
solemnly  anathematized  it  as  an  opinion  that  must  neither  be 
taught  nor  defended.  And  the  Synod  of  Dort  echoed  back 
the  fulminations  of  the  Vatican.  Every  school-boy  knows 
how  Galileo,  gray-haired  and  worn  with  suffering,  was  brought 
from  a  dungeon  and  perhaps  from  torture,  before  the  grand 
tribunal,  and  there,  on  his  knees,  with  his  hands  upon  the 
Holy  Gospels,  compelled  to  abjure  the  opinion  of  the  earth's 
mobility  as  erroneous,  heretical,  and  contrary  to  Scripture. 
The  heroic  Kepler,  whilst  pursuing  the  discoveries  of  Galileo, 
with  the  speculations  in  his  "Harmonies  of  the  Universe,"  was 
likewise  persecuted  in  Catholic  and  Protestant  countries  by 
turns.  And  even  when  Newton  had  completed  the  whole 
masterly  demonstration,  his  immortal  work  was  placed  in  the 
forbidden  list  of  the  Inquisition,  and  for  a  century  afterwards 
proscribed  in  the  University  of  Spain.  In  fact,  it  is  not 
many  years  since  the  name  of  Galileo  was  expunged  from  the 
catalogue  of  heretics,  or  the  monument  of  Copernicus  allowed 
to  have  a  characteristic  epitaph. 

Geology,  anthropology,  and   other   sciences   were   not  as- 
sailed until  later  times.     Meanwhile,  too,  the  state  of  parties 


CHAP.   I .]  The  Revolt  of  Philosophy.  45 

was  changing.  The  spirit  of  rehgious  persecution  was  melt- 
ing away  before  the  growing  tolerance  of  the  age.  The 
Church  was  rent  into  two  great  hostile  fragments ;  Catholi- 
cism was  forced  back  into  closer  alliance  with  the  patristic  and 
scholastic  systems  ;  Protestantism  was  organized  only  in  scat- 
tered sects  amid  polemical  feuds ;  Infidelity  was  secretly 
spreading  on  all  sides  from  the  leaders  to  the  ranks,  both 
Catholic  and  Protestant;  and  thus  at  length  Theology,  true 
Theology,  like  the  remnant  of  an  invading  army  broken  by 
repulse,  dissension  and  mutiny,  was  forced  to  retreat  into  her 
own  domain,  where  she  has  since  been  engaged  in  building 
apologetical  bulwarks  around  the  essential  faith. 

Philosophy,  however,  did  not  always  remain  on  the  defen- 
sive, but  at  length  recoiled  against  theology.  Even  in  her 
most  abject  state  she  but  lay  crouched  under  the  foot  of  that 
stern  mistress  as  a  sullen  sphinx  whose  riddles  had  not  been 
solved,  and  no  sooner  did  she  gain  her  freedom  than  she 
seemed  about  to  turn  and  devour  her  conqueror.  Long  be- 
fore infidelity  dared  appear,  there  had  been  heard  through 
the  dialectics  of  Roscelin  and  Abelard,  as  in  unconscious 
menace,  suppressed  murmurs  of  the  sceptical  spirit.  As  early 
as  the  fifteenth  century  Nicholas  of  Cusa,  in  his  "Apology 
for  Learned  Ignorance,"  had  assailed  the  foundations  of  all 
knowledge,  divine  as  well  as  human ;  and  John  Wessel  of 
Groningen,  the  Light  of  the  World  and  Master  of  Contradic- 
tions, had  unmasked  the  scholastic  sophistry  and  even  fore- 
told a  returning  dawn  of  common  sense  and  reason.  And  in 
the  first  part  of  the  sixteenth  century  John  Reuchlin  had 
rescued  Jewish  learning  from  the  destroying  hands  of  the 
monks,  with  a  triumphant  exposure  of  their  ignorance  and 
bigotry;  Agrippa  of  Nettesheim,  in  his  "Vanity  of  the  Sci- 
ences," had  scourged  their  conceit  and  pedantry  with  cynical 
invective ;  and  Erasmus  of  Rotterdam,  in  his  "  Praise  of 
Folly,"  had  turned  upon  them  the  contempt  of  the  age  in  sal- 
lies of  satirical  humor.  But  it  was  not  until  the  Reformation 
had  fully  effected  the  liberation  and  independence  of  philoso- 
phy, that  she  began  to  be  drawn  into  alliances  hostile  alike  to 
Catholicism,  to  Protestantism,  and  to  Christianity  itself 
Hitherto  she  had  moved  obsequiously  within  the  pale  of  the 


46  Reformed  Christian  Science.  [part  i. 

Church,  often  in  the  disguise  of  the  most  demure  orthodoxy, 
and  never  beyond  the  restraints  of  virtue ;  now  she  was 
emerging  upon  the  broad  stage  of  the  world,  with  soldiers, 
civilians,  and  nobles  in  her  train,  and  among  them  were  'some 
who  only  abused  their  freedom  in  her  name  or  concealed  their 
unbelief  with  her  charms.  It  was  in  this  period,  whilst  the 
ancient  schools  were  yet  lingering,  flourished  Pomponatius 
of  Mantua,  an  Aristotelian  infidel,  who  masked  his  impiety 
and  vice  under  outward  reverence  to  the  Church ;  Mon- 
taigne of  Bordeaux,  a  Pyrrhonic  sceptic,  whose  sprightly 
"  Essays,"  more  pagan  than  Christian,  have  been  styled  the 
breviary  of  free-thinkers  ;  and  Herbert  of  Cherbury,  a  Platonic 
theist,  in  whose  "Religion  of  the  Gentiles"  the  highest  form 
of  classic  virtue  was  strangely  blended  with  the  fervor  of  his 
more  saintly  brother,  the  quaint  poet  of  the  "  Temple."  And 
in  the  seventeenth  century,  whilst  the  modern  schools  were 
still  forming,  appeared  Hobbes  and  Shaftsbury,  disciples  of 
Bacon,  and  the  forerunners  of  English  deism ;  Le  Vayer  and 
Bayle,  disciples  of  Gassendi,  and  the  forerunners  of  French 
atheism ;  and  Leibnitz  and  Spinoza,  disciples  of  Des  Cartes, 
and  the  forerunners  of  German  pantheism.  At  the  same 
time,  long  before  these  philosophical  extremes  had  been 
reached,  the  more  practical  cultivators  of  science,  engaged  in 
special  researches,  began  to  be  conscious  of  the  rupture  which 
had  been  growing  unwittingly  among  their  theoretical  leaders, 
as  was  shown  at  first  in  a  certain  tone  of  studied  respect  or 
mock  deference  which  they  felt  obliged  to  assume  towards  the 
authorities  of  the  Church. 

"In  theology,"  said  Kepler,  "we  balance  authorities;  in 
philosophy  we  weigh  reasons.  A  holy  man  was  Lactantius, 
who  denied  that  the  earth  was  round ;  a  holy  man  was  Au- 
gustine, who  granted  the  rotundity,  but  denied  the  antipodes ; 
a  holy  thing  to  me  is  the  Inquisition,  which  allows  the  small- 
ness  of  the  earth,  but  denies  its  motion  ;  but  more  holy  to  mc 
is  truth  ;  and  hence  I  prove  by  philosophy  that  the  earth  is 
round,  inhabited  on  every  side,  of  small  size,  and  in  motion 
among  the  stars, — and  this  I  do  with  no  disrespect  to  the 
doctors."  It  has  even  been  questioned  whether  Galileo  was 
quite  the  martyr  which  so  often  figures  in  academic  oratory, 


CHAP.    I.]  TJic  Rise  of  Scientific   Scepticism.  47 

now  that  wc  are  told  by  Roman  divines  themselves  that  his 
recantation  was  a  mere  decorous  form  conceded  by  one  party 
to  the  scruples  of  another,  and  it  is  even  hinted  that  the  fa- 
mous saying,  "  And  yet  the  earth  does  move,"  with  which  he 
rose  from  his  knees,  instead  of  being  the  heroic  soliloquy  of  a 
mind  cherishing  its  conviction  of  the  truth  in  spite  of  persecu- 
tion, may  have  been  uttered  as  a  playful  epigram  in  the  ear  of 
a  cardinal's  secretary,  with  the  full  knowledge  that  it  would 
be  immediately  repeated  to  his  master.  Certain  it  is  at  least, 
that  in  his  "  Dialogues  on  the  System  of  the  World,"  he 
speaks  sarcastically  of  a  "  wholesome  edict  promulgated  at 
Rome  which,  in  order  to  silence  the  perilous  scandals  of  the 
present  age,  imposed  silence  upon  the  Pythagorean  mobility 
of  the  earth." 

It  is  well  known  that  Descartes  only  avoided  the  fate  of 
Galileo,  at  the  hands  of  Cardinal  Richelieu  and  the  Sorbonne, 
by  a  prudent  reserve  respecting  his  astronomical  opinions, 
which  has  been  more  censured  than  praised.  Perhaps  even 
Bruno  and  Vanini,  who  at  an  earlier  date  had  held  like  opin- 
ions, might  have  escaped  martyrdom  as  philosophers,  had 
they  not  chosen  to  brave  the  ecclesiastical  penalties  of 
their  speculations.  Andrew  Vesalius,  sometimes  claimed  as  a 
martyr  of  science  for  his  sufferings  in  the  cause  of  demon- 
strative anatomy,  seems  to  have  fallen  under  the  censure  of 
the  Inquisition  of  Madrid  as  much  through  misfortune  and 
vulgar  prejudice  as  from  any  religious  intolerance.  And 
Michael  Servetus,  but  for  a  fatal  proclivity  to  theological  spec- 
ulations and  the  blasphemy  with  which  he  provoked  the 
Council  of  Geneva,  might  have  been  remembered  in  this  more 
tolerant  age  chiefly  as  a  discoverer  of  the  circulation  of  the 
blood. 

But  whilst  such  early  harbingers  of  science  avowed  no  di- 
rect hostility  to  religion,  it  was  not  long  before  some  of  their 
successors,  of  a  less  devout  spirit,  were  invading,  in  the  name 
of  free  thought,  its  most  sacred  mysteries.  The  supernatural 
facts  of  Christianity  appearing  inconsistent  with  a  scientific 
conception  of  nature,  were  treated  by  them  as  mere  inherited 
fables  of  antiquity,  or  classed  with  feats  of  magic  and  sorcery, 
as  if  in  malicious  retaliation  for  the  stigma  to  which  the  phy- 


48  Reformed  Cliristian  Science.  [part   i. 

sical  researches  had  been  so  long  subjected  whilst  under  the 
ban  of  the  Church.  Shakspere,  with  a  kind  of  prophetic  saga- 
city, seems  to  have  discerned  such  scepticism  as  the  rising 
spirit  of  his'  time  : 

"  They  say,  miracles  are  past ;  and  we  have  our  philosophical  persons  to 
make  modern  and  familiar,  things  supernatural  and  causeless.  Hence  it  is  that 
we  make  trifles  of  terrors,  ensconcing  ourselves  into  seeming  knowledge,  when 
we  should  submit  to  an  unknown  fear." — (All's  Well.  Act  ii.  Sc.  iii.) 

And  soon  the  movement  reached  a  development  which  em- 
braced all  Europe  within  its  sweep  and  bore  away  the  most 
sacred  land-marks  in  its  tide. 

In  England,  during  the  seventeenth  century,  from  the  very 
feet  of  Bacon  and  Locke,  went  forth  the  school  of  deists  arraying 
experience  against  revelation,  with  the  courtly  satire  of  Shaftes- 
bury, the  perverse  ingenuity  of  Woolaston,  the  coarse  raillery 
of  Mandeville,  the  elegant  verse  of  Pope,  the  blighting  sarcasm 
of  Bolingbroke,  the  insidious  irony  of  Gibbon,  and  the  subtle 
scepticism  of  Hume.  In  France,  during  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, from  the  same  empiricism  as  inherited  from  Gassendi 
and  Bayle  and  pursued  by  Condillac  and  D'Alembert,  sprang 
that  brilliant  coterie  of  wits,  Diderot,  Helvetius,  Voltaire  and 
Rousseau,  striving  to  organize  science  against  religion  in  the 
tomes  of  the  Encyclopaedia,  at  the  banquets  of  D'Holbach 
and  under  the  patronage  of  Frederick  the  Great.  And  at 
length,  towards  the  close  of  the  last  century,  what  had  begun 
in  a  reaction  from  the  English  Reign  of  Saints  precipitated 
the  French  Reign  of  Terror,  and  the  goddess  of  reason,  in 
the  person  of  lust,  was  enthroned  at  the  very  altar  of  the 
Church. 

And  thus,  in  the  course  of  centuries,  the  positions  of  the 
two  antagonists  had  been  completely  reversed.  The  faggot 
of  the  Inquisition  had  been  exchanged  for  the  guillotine  of  the 
Revolution.  And  theology,  having  begun  with  a  vain  attempt 
to  suppress  reason  by  authority,  had  ended  with  a  defensive 
struggle  for  her  own  life ;  whilst  philosophy,  having  begun 
with  a  legitimate  revolt  of  reason  from  authority,  had  ended 
with  a  wild  assault  against  the  very  citadel  of  the  faith. 

The  reformation  of  Christian  science  has  brought  with  it 
all  the  boasted  advantages  of  our  modern  civilization ;  on  the 


CHAP.   I.]    The  Present  Epoch  of  Decisive   Warfare.  49 

one  side,  in  the  wake  of  the  scientific  movement,  the  discovery 
of  America,  the  invention  of  gunpowder,  printing,  steam,  tele- 
graphy, the  manifold  marvels  of  physical  art,  industry,  and 
culture ;  on  the  other  side,  in  the  wake  of  the  religious  move- 
ment, the  colonization  of  America,  the  growth  of  popular  in- 
stitutions, the  multiplication  of  presses,  schools,  and  missions, 
the  great  moral  achievements  of  piety,  charity,  and  philan- 
thropy. But,  at  the  same  time,  it  has  been  attended,  thus  far 
in  its  progress,  with  the  incidental  evils  of  an  unprecedented 
sectarianism  in  religion,  infidelity  in  science,  and  consequent 
schism  in  philosophy,  for  which  no  adequate  remedies  have 
yet  been  found. 

Reserving  such  questions  for  following  lectures,  we  are  now 
ready  to  collect  from  our  historical  review  several  results 
which  at  this  point  should  be  clearly  fixed  in  the  mind.  On 
glancing  back  over  the  path  which  we  have  traversed,  it  will 
be  seen  that  the  course  of  controversy  between  the  scientific 
and  the  religious  spirit  for  the  last  eighteen  hundred  years  has 
been  growing  more  and  more  critical,  like  the  skirmishing 
which  leads  to  systematic  warfare,  until  at  length  the  field  is 
now  cleared,  the  weapons  forged,  and  the  rival  interests  staked 
as  for  a  last  decisive  encounter. 

For  the  field  of  this  warfare,  we  behold  the  lines  drawn  be- 
tween the  Natural  and  the  Supernatural  as  the  respective 
provinces  of  science  and  religion.  The  region  of  phenomena, 
laws,  and  forces  is  seized  by  the  former ;  while  that  of  divine 
manifestations,  causes,  and  purposes  is  held  by  the  latter. 
Never  before  has  this  great  distinction  been  brought  so  boldly 
into  view.  In  the  early  ages  all  religion,  Pagan  as  well  as 
Christian,  claimed  to  be  miraculous  and  divine,  and  science 
was  as  yet  too  crude  and  vague  to  oppose  it  with  the  notion 
of  natural  law.  If  there  were  some  of  the  Greek  physicists 
who  had  begun  to  supplant  mythologic  with  scientific  views 
of  nature,  yet  their  theories  soon  died  out  for  want  of  empiri- 
cal research  or  at  length  became  overlaid  with  patristic  tradi- 
tions. In  the  middle  ages  the  wildest  supernaturalism  reigned 
on  every  side.  Not  only  was  the  whole  church  filled  with 
the  shrines  and  miracles  of  saints,  angels,  and  martyrs ;  but  the 
world  outside  was  peopled  with  demons,  fairies,  and  monsters, 


50  Reformed  Christian  Science.  [part  I. 

and  the  ^evj  brave  spirits  who  strove  to  exorcise  them  with 
the  wand  of  science  were  themselves  stigmatized  as  but  child- 
ren of  Satan.  But,  in  modern  times,  with  the  rise  of  the  inr 
ductive  spirit,  a  growing  naturalism  has  been  pushing  the 
reign  of  law  against  that  of  caprice,  from  one  set  of  phenomena 
to  another,  until  at  length  it  seems  to  have  become  an  open 
contest  between  the  scientific  and  religious  conception  of  the 
universe  as  to  which  shall  hold  its  ground  against  the  other. 
The  great  questions  to  be  settled  are,  whether  the  Supernatu- 
ral can  be  explained  and  resolved  into  the  Natural  ;  or 
whether  they  form  distinct  and  irreconcilable  orders  of  facts  ; 
or  whether  though  distinguishable,  they  may  not  be  analogous 
and  congruous,  having  proceeded  from  the  same  Intelligent 
Author  as  but  parts  of  one  and  the  same  grand  system. 

For  the  weapons  of  this  warfare,  we  behold  Reason  and 
Revelation  wielded  as  the  several  prerogatives  of  science  and 
religion.  The  former  claims  the  human  mind  as  the  sole  in- 
strument of  all  knowledge ;  whilst  the  latter  offers  the  aid  of 
the  divine  mind  in  disclosing  much  that  would  otherwise  be 
unknown.  And  this  is  a  division  of  functions  which  has 
never  before  been  urged  with  such  clearness  and  jealousy. 
In  the  early  ages,  the  fathers  sought  to  recommend  the 
Christian  revelation  as  itself  solving  the  problems  upon  which 
all  philosophy  had  hitherto  been  vainly  exercised,  and  even 
the  infidels  of  the  time  were  fain  to  rival  the  prophets  and 
apostles  with  a  kind  of  mystic  theosophy.  In  the  middle 
ages,  the  schoolmen  were  wont  to  mingle  anathemas  with 
their  very  dialectics,  and  chaining  reason  to  the  feet  of  au- 
thority set  its  lessons  for  it  in  the  writings  of  the  fathers,  whilst 
the  book  of  nature  was  sealed  up  as  a  forbidden  volume.  But 
the  modern  rationalists,  turning  their  Protestant  freedom  into 
license,  have  been  invading  one  region  after  another  lying  be- 
yond the  natural  reach  of  our  faculties,  until  at  length  they 
seem  ready  to  usurp  the  throne  of  Omniscience  itself  It  is 
plainly  mooted,  whether  Reason  is  not  outgrowing  and  super- 
seding Revelation ;  or  whether,  as  diverse  organs  of  the  finite 
intellect  and  the  Infinite  Intellect,  they  are  doomed  to  ceaseless 
conflict,  or  whether,  however  antagonistic,  they  may  not  still  co- 
operate as  joint  factors  of  knowledge  in  all  fields  of  research. 


CHAP.   I.]  The  Immense  Interests  at  Stake.  51 

And  for  the  issues  of  this  warfare,  we  behold  CiviHzation 
and  Christianity  staked  as  clashing  interests  of  science  and 
religion.  On  the  one  side  are  the  temporal  concerns  of  so- 
ciety, its  art,  politics,  and  philosophy ;  and  on  the  other  side 
are  the  eternal  interests  of  the  individual,  his  creed,  life,  and 
worship.  And  this,  too,  is  such  a  rupture  of  parties  as  our 
times  alone  have  witnessed.  In  the  primitive  culture,  under 
imperial  Rome,  the  Church  was  in  false  alliance  with  the 
State,  worship  was  wedded  to  a  pagan  art,  theology  was  mixed 
with  heathen  philosophy,  and  Christianity  embarked  in  a  cor- 
rupt civilization.  In  the  mediaeval  culture,  under  papal  Rome, 
the  State  was  simply  prostrate  before  the  Church,  art  was  in 
bondage  to  a  false  worship,  philosophy  was  subdued  by  the- 
ology and  civilization  overpowered  by  a  corrupt  Christianity. 
But  in  modern  culture  since  the  Reformation,  the  Church  has 
become  divorced  from  the  State,  art  estranged  from  worship, 
science  detached  from  religion,  and  civilization  more  or  less 
at  variance  with  Christianity.  And  now  it  remains  to  be  seen 
whether  the  two  sets  of  interests  are  involved  in  an  extermi- 
nating warfare  by  which  the  whole  existing  Christianity  and 
civilization,  like  the  ancient  faith  and  culture,  shall  be  whelmed 
in  a  common  ruin  ;  or  whether,  as  science  becomes  reconciled 
to  religion,  art  shall  be  resolved  into  worship,  the  State  be 
merged  in  the  Church,  and  a  new  Christian  civilization  pre- 
vail over  heathen  barbarism  throughout  the  earth. 


CHAPTER  II. 


MODERN  ANTAGONISM  BETWEEN  SCIENCE  AND 
RELIGION. 


The  first  view  of  a  distant  battle-field  could  only  astonish 
and  bewilder  any  one  wholly  unacquainted  with  the  plan  of 
the  action.  It  would  matter  not  how  well  he  had  studied 
the  causes  of  the  conflict  or  the  great  interests  at  stake.  If  he 
knew  nothing  of  the  opposing  forces  there  arrayed,  of  their  or- 
derly disposition  over  the  field,  and  of  their  successive  manceu- 
vres,  he  would  be  at  a  loss  where  to  look  for  friend  and  foe, 
or  how  to  estimate  the  ebb  and  flow  of  the  struggle ;  and 
there  would  appear  before  him  nought  but  one  wide  scene  of 
tumult,  filled  with  hurrying  crowds,  the  smoke  and  din  of 
arms,  confused  war-cries,  heroic  charges  and  desperate  re- 
pulses, without  intelligible  aim  or  result.  . 

And  so  it  would  be  a  sufficient  reason,  were  there  no  other, 
for  our  proposed  sketch  of  philosophical  parties  in  modern 
times,  that  it  may  tend  somewhat  to  relieve  this  whole  subject 
of  its  vagueness  and  obscurity.  So  long  as  any  opinion  or 
movement  is  discussed  in  the  abstract,  under  the  dry  forms  of 
logic,  it  will  lack  that  freshness  and  interest  which  it  acquires 
when  it  passes  from  the  region  of  theory  into  that  of  practice, 
and  becomes  concrete  in  a  man  or  a  party  espousing  and  de- 
fending it.  We  are,  indeed,  only  beating  the  air  while  we  con- 
tend against  notions  which  no  one  has  ever  thought  of  hold- 
ing, or  make  distinctions  which  as  yet  appear  purely  hypo- 
thetical and  impracticable ;  but  if  we  can  show  all  the  possible 
shades  of  opinion  concerning  a  question  to  be  also  actual ;  if 
52 


CHAP.  II.]  Modern  Philosophical  Parties.  53 

we  can  cite  well-known  writers  and  systems  as  exemplifying 
them ;  if  we  can  even  group  together  the  great  leaders  of 
modern  thought,  with  their  respective  followers,  as  already 
taking  sides  upon  that  question,  in  each  of  the  sciences  on  the 
battle-ground  of  philosophy;  in  a  word,  if  to  our  review  of 
past  conflicts  between  Religion  and  Science  we  can  now  add 
a  survey  of  the  present  parties  issuing  therefrom,  and  of  the 
controversies  still  pending  between  them,  we  shall  then  have 
before  us  the  living  men  and  interests  of  our  own  historic  pe- 
riod and  the  actual  stage  whereon  we,  too,  are  to  perform  our 
several  parts. 

Now,  although  there  may  have  been  as  yet  nothing  like 
extended  organization  or  concert  underneath  the  vast  medley 
of  modern  philosophical  opinions  respecting  the  great  ques- 
tion before  us,  yet  we  shall  find  that,  throughout  the  educated 
mind  of  the  age,  that  mind  which  garners  the  past  and  fore- 
casts the  future,  there  has  been  a  steady,  silent  growth  of 
feelings  and  beliefs  which  at  least  admit  of  being  defined,  com- 
pared and  estimated.  We  may  see  them  reflected  and  con- 
trasted in  all  modern  literature  so  plainly  that  the  whole  com- 
munity of  the  learned,  from  our  present  point  of  view,  will  ap- 
pear marshalled  into  parties  or  classes,  in  some  one  of  which 
every  leading  school,  system,  and  opinion  may  be  found. 

Of  such  parties,  the  two  most  marked  are  those  who  are 
averse  and  those  who  are  inapt  to  the  great  work  of  harmon- 
izing the  knowledge  of  man  with  the  knowledge  of  God;  and 
these  parties  are  again  subdivisible  according  to  the  kind  and 
degree  of  such  aversion  or  unfitness.  So  that,  as  we  proceed, 
four  distinct  classes  will  emerge  into  view,  in  the  order  in 
which  we  name  them:  1st.  The  Extremists,  who  would  ren- 
der science  and  religion  hostile  and  exterminant.  2d.  The 
Indiflerentists,  who  would  leave  them  separate  and  indepen- 
dent. 3d.  The  Impatients  or  Eclectics,  who  would  combine 
them  prematurely  and  illogically,  4th.  The  Despondents  or 
Sceptics,  who  would  abandon  them  as  contradictory  and  irre- 
concilable. And  each  of  these  classes  will  divide  into  wings, 
or  correspondent  groups  of  scientists  and  religionists,  accord- 
ing as  the  point  of  departure  taken  is  scientific  or  religious 
in  thus  opposing,  sundering,  combining,  or  abandoning  the 


54  Scientific  and  Religious  Exti-emists.  [part  i. 

two  interests.     We  devote   this  chapter  to  the   first  of  these 
classes. 
I        To  the  extremists  belong  such  religionists  and  scientists  as 

*  depart  towards  the  extremes  of  mutual  opposition,  the  one  by 

*  forcing  revelation  into  the  province  of  reason,  and  the  other 

*  by  forcing  reason  into  the  province  of  revelation.  They  are 
the  poles  apart  as  to  every  question  into  which  Scripture  and 
Science  can  enter.  They  insist,  each  against  the  other,  upon 
exclusive  jurisdiction  throughout  the  entire  domain  of  truth; 
or,  if  they  admit  any  common  ground,  it  is  to  be  viewed  as  a 
battle-field,  in  which  there  can  be  neither  peace  nor  truce,  but 
only  deadly  warfare  until  one  or  the  other  is  exterminated. 
In  short,  they  are  the  men  who  cany  the  black  flag  in  the 
field  of  philosophy. 

Let  us  glance  more  particularly  at  their  respective  posi- 
tions, state  some  of  the  controversies  pending  between  them, 
and  estimate  their  common  errors. 

On  the  one  side  is  the  religious  extremist  or  extreme  reli- 
gionist, who  would  invade  the  whole  province  of  reason.  The 
Scriptures  he  takes  to  be  a  revelation,  not  merely  in  respect 
to  strictly  theological  questions,  but  also  in  respect  to  such 
purely  scientific  questions  as  the  construction  of  the  material 
universe,  the  formation  and  antiquity  of  the  globe,  and  the 
physical  and  psychical  organization  of  mankind.  The  allu- 
sions of  the  sacred  writers  to  such  matters  are  wrought  by 
him  into  a  kind  of  scientific  creed  which  he  is  ready  to  main- 
tain in  defiance  of  all  opposing  theories,  and  to  bind  upon  the 
conscience  as  pure  dogma  or  mystery  of  faith  ;  and  even 
when  his  interpretation  runs  against  discovered  facts,  rather 
than  change  it,  he  is  fain  to  suppose  a  miracle  wrought  where 
one  would  have  been  as  useless  as  improbable.  Theology  is 
for  him  a  stern  mistress  of  the  sciences,  rather  than  their 
adored  queen,  and  holds  them  in  abject  pupilage  at  her  feet. 

On  the  other  side  is  the  scientific  extremist  or  extreme  sci- 
entist, who  would  invade  the  whole  province  of  revelation. 
The  natural  reason  he  deems  competent  to  deal,  not  only  with 
scientific  questions,  but  even  with  the  high  theological  prob- 
lems of  creation,  atonement,  and  judgment ;  of  duty,  destiny, 
and  eternity.     By  means  of  its  crude  surmises  he  frames  a 


CHAP.  II.]  Origin  of  Modem  Extremists.  55 

kind  of  theological  theory,  which  he  weighs  again.5t  all  in- 
spired teaching,  and  claims  to  support  with  purely  natural  evi- 
dence ;  and  when  any  of  his  discoveries  or  speculations  ap- 
pear inconsistent  with  a  received  interpretation  of  Scripture, 
he  is  in  haste  not  merely  to  unsettle  that  interpretation,  but 
to  impugn  the  veiy  fact  of  inspiration  itself,  together  with  the 
entire  doctrinal  system  which  it  upholds.  Science  becomes 
in  his  hands  a  crazed  parricide  of  Theology,  rather  than  her 
sane  daughter,  and  with  every  new  discovery  aims  a  reckless 
blow  at  the  very  breasts  which  nurtured  it. 

We  have  already  found  examples  of  this  ultraism,  under- 
each  of  its  antagonistic  phases,  very  early  in  the  history  of 
Christian  science,  but  the  spirit  has  by  no  means  died  out  in 
modern  times,  having  in  fact  acquired  a  momentum  from  its 
past  conflicts  which  is  already  carrying  it  to  the  wildest  ex- 
tremes. This  will  appear  by  briefly  recalling  the  chief  fea- 
tures of  the  successive  epochs  as  before  reviewed.  During 
the  age  of  the  Gentile  philosophers,  we  have  seen  that  religion 
and  science  dwelt  apart  in  a  state  of  local  seclusion,  and  could 
not  as  yet  even  appreciate  each  other's  mission  :  it  had  become 
the  characteristic  traits  of  their  representative  races,  that  the 
Jews  required  a  sign  and  the  Greeks  sought  wisdom.  Dur- 
ing the  age  of  the  first  Christian  converts,  science  and  religion 
met  as  strangers,  mistaking  each  other  for  foes  and  waging  a 
death  struggle  for  pre-eminence  :  it  was  then  that  the  Chris- 
tians despised  philosophy  as  the  wisdom  of  the  world,  and  the 
philosophers  despised  Christianity  as  a  superstition  of  the 
Jews.  During  the  age  of  the  Greek  fathers,  philosophy  had 
subjugated  theology,  and  religion  became  corrupted  with  false 
science:  it  was  then  that  Origen  sat  at  the  feet  of  Plato, 
blending  Pagan  speculation  with  Christian  doctrine.  During 
the  age  of  the  Latin  schoolmen,  theology  had  subjugated 
philosophy,  and  science  became  corrupted  with  false  religion : 
it  was  then  that  Aristotle  sat  at  the  feet  of  Augustine,  weaving 
Christian  tradition  into  Pagan  learning.  During  the  age  of 
the  reformers,  theology  and  philosophy  were  torn  asunder,  the 
one  assailing  with  bitter  persecutions,  and  the  other  recoiling 
with  bloody  revolutions ;  until  at  length  amid  the  confusion 
of  parties  which  has  ensued,  we  behold  at  the  one  extreme  a 


56  TJie  Conflict  in  the  Physical  Sciences.         [part  i. 

species  of  bigotry  which  assumes  the  name  of  reHgion,  and  at 
the  other  a  form  of  infidehty  which  masks  itself  in  the  garb  of 
science.  And  now  the  classes  first  to  be  surveyed  are  those 
who  simply  accept  these  extremes  which  history  has  precipi- 
tated upon  us  and  drive  them  to  their  final  consequences,  as 
we  shall  proceed  to  show,  not  merely  in  each  of  the  sciences, 
but  throughout  the  whole  domain  of  philosophy,  and  ulti- 
mately into  the  most  practical  spheres  of  civilization. 

In  this  sketch  the  terms  infidel  and  apologist  will  be  used 
in  their  received  sense,  to  denote  respectively  the  assailants 
and  defendants  of  revealed  religion  as  distinguished  from 
mere  natural  religion  or  irreligion;  and  the  aim  will  be  to  trace 
impartially  that  conflict  between  them  which  has  been  pre- 
sented on  the  scientific  side  by  such  writers  as  Baden  Powell, 
Lecky,  Theodore  Martin,  Lange,  Draper,  and  Andrew  White; 
on  the  religious  side,  by  such  writers  as  Farrar,  Lechler, 
Bartholmess,  Ebrard,  Hettinger  and  Luthardt;  and  on  both 
sides,  by  the  numerous  writers  who  have  treated  of  special 
religious  controversies  in  the  different  sciences.  It  need  scarce- 
ly be  premised  that  the  few  infidels  who  have  perverted  science 
are  no  more  strictly  representative  than  the  few  apologists 
who  have  disgraced  religion,  and  that  taken  together  they 
form  but  inconsiderable  factions  in  contrast  with  the  true  vo- 
taries of  either  interest. 

Entering  first  the  field  of  the  physical  sciences,  we  shall 
there  behold  the  battle  raging  in  one  science  after  another, 
in  astronomy,  in  geology,  in  anthropology ;  from  one  country 
to  another,  from  Italy  to  England,  to  France,  to  Germany,  to 
America ;  through  successive  generations,  like  a  hereditary 
feud  which  lingers  after  its  original  actors  may  have  been  for- 
gotten. 

The  Conflict  in  Astronomy. 

From  the  rational  side  of  astronomy  there  have  been  re- 
peated attacks  against  the  revealed  doctrine  of  the  heavens. 
At  the  dawn  of  the  science  it  was  perverted  to  infidel  uses. 
Pomponatius,  in  a  work  on  natural  philosophy,  while  yet  the 
Ptolemaic  system  reigned,  blended  it  with  astrological  views 
of  planetary  influence,  which  were  at  variance  with  the  Mosaic 


CHAP.  II.]  Italy,  England,  France,  Germany.  57 

doctrine  of  signs  and  seasons,  and  subversive  of  the  whole 
miraculous  element  in  Christianity.  Bruno,  as  an  early  advo- 
cate of  the  Copernican  theory,  admitted  before  the  University 
of  Oxford,  that  it  was  incompatible  with  the  Scriptures,  and 
sought  to  base  its  discovery  of  innumerable  worlds  in  a  kind 
of  materialistic  pantheism,  for  which  as  yet  no  other  name  than 
atheism  had  been  found.  Campanella,  though  afterwards  a 
zealot  for  the  papacy,  wrote  an  apology  for  Galileo,  which 
caused  him  to  be  classed  with  the  assailants  of  Christianity. 
And  the  cruel  persecution  of  these  first  martyrs  of  science  is 
explained,  though  surely  not  justified,  by  the  sarcastic  and 
often  contumacious  tone  which  they  assumed  towards  sacred 
subjects  and  authorities. 

The  English  free-thinkers,  however,  could  more  safely  ar- 
ray the  new  astronomy  against  revealed  religion.  Foulke 
Greville  seems  to  have  held  a  symposium  for  the  liberal  dis- 
cussion of  the  Copernican  system,  which  Bruno  has  fully  re- 
ported under  the  suggestive  title,  "  An  Ash-Wednesday  Feast." 
Shaftesbury,  in  his  "  Characteristics,"  argued  that  the  apparent 
lack  of  final  cause  or  intelligent  design  throughout  the  infinity 
of  worlds,  made  the  earth  an  insignificant  exception,  and 
formed  an  overwhelming  argument  on  the  side  of  atheism. 
Bolingbroke,  according  to  Whewell,  ridiculed  the  Newtonian 
theory  of  gravitation,  as  only  based  upon  an  occult  miracle, 
and  for  a  time  misled  Pope  into  the  shallow  sneer : 

"  Philosophy  that  reached  the  heavens  before, 
Shrinks  to  her  hidden  cause  and  is  no  more." 

Thomas  Paine,  in  his  "  Age  of  Reason,"  scoffed  at  the  idea  of  a 
redemption  of  our  little  world  by  an  incarnate  God,  as  utterly 
discredited  by  the  grandeur  of  the  Creator  and  the  immensity 
of  His  creation. 

But  it  seems  to  have  been  reserved  for  some  of  the  French 
astronomers  to  give  the  science  an  all  but  infidel  expression. 
Gabriel  Fontanelle,  the  brilliant  Secretary  of  the  Academy, 
who  wove  its  laurels  at  the  same  time  that  he  dispensed 
its  learning,  composed  his  elegant  "  Dialogues  on  the  Plu- 
rality of  Worlds  "  in  a  thoroughly  undevout  spirit,  suggest- 
ing the  doubts  which  were  to  be  more  coarsely  expressed  by 


rg  TJic  Conflict  in  Astrofiomy.  [part  i. 

Paine.  Lalande,  another  popular  astronomer  of  the  time, 
proclaimed  atheism  in  the  Pantheon  with  the  red  cap  on  his 
head,  and  in  the  preface  to  his  treatise  classed  Derham's 
Astro-theology,  and  all  such  religious  writings  upon  the  celes- 
tial scenery,  with  Fontanelle's  Dialogues,  as  mere  amusing 
speculations.  La  Place,  the  worthy  successor  of  Newton  in 
everything  but  his  piety,  surmised  in  his  "  Celestial  Mechanics  " 
that  the  solar  system  fnight  have  been  more  advantageously 
adapted  to  human  welfare;  and  when  asked  by  Napoleon  why 
there  was  no  mention  of  a  God  in  his  "  System  of  the  World," 
replied,  that  he  no  longer  needed  that  hypothesis.  And  as 
if  to  complete  this  cycle  of  impiety,  Auguste  Comte,  in  his 
Popular  Astronomy,  has  dared  to  pronounce  the  grand  theme 
of  the  Psalmist  obsolete,  by  affirming  that  the  heavens  declare 
no  other  glory  than  that  of  Hipparchus,  Kepler,  Newton,  and 
all  those  who  have  aided  in  establishing  their  laws. 

At  length  such  undevout  astronomy  has  been  pushed  to'  its 
mad  extreme  by  the  German  rationalists  of  our  day.  Bal- 
lenstedt,  in  his  shallow  work  on  the  primitive  world,  renewed 
the  deistical  objections  drawn  from  the  infinite  extent  of  the 
universe  as  contrasted  with  the  obscure  speck  which  man  in- 
habits ;  and  Bretschneider  declared  that,  by  the  overthrow  of 
the  old  Ptolemaic  system,  all  the  distinctive  doctrines  of  the 
Christian  religion,  the  incarnation,  atonement,  ascension,  final 
judgment,  heaven  and  hell,  have  fallen  to  the  ground  like  the 
play-houses  of  children  in  a  storm.  Carl  Michelet,  consis- 
tently with  his  pantheistical  idealism,  has  maintained  in  his 
Lectures  on  Divine  Personality  and  Human  Immortality,  that 
there  is  no  God  and  no  spirit  outside  of  our  planet,  and  that  sun, 
moon  and  stars  are  bare  rocks  of  light,  floating  in  the  heavens, 
and  serving  but  as  tapers  along  the  development  of  the  Hege- 
lian philosophy.  And  David  Strauss,  in  both  his  earlier  and 
later  works,  treating  of  the  Christian  Faith  in  its  conflict  with 
modern  science,  declares  that  the  discovery  of  other  stellar 
universes  beyond  our  little  Copernican  system,  has  given  the 
finishing  blow  to  the  whole  Jewish  and  Christian  conception 
of  heaven  with  its  throne  and  angels,  and  left  naught  but  a 
crowd  of  dissolving  suns  and  planets,  amid  which  man  must  live 
and  die,  literally  without  God  and  without  hope  in  the  world. 


CHAP.  II.]  Italy,  England,  France,  Germany.  59 

From  the  revealed  side  of  the  science,  however,  quite  as 
frequent  attacks  have  been  made  upon  the  rational  theory  of 
the  heavens.  No  sooner  had  Copernicus  published  his  trea- 
tise than  it  was  placed  in  the  Index  of  prohibited  works  for 
censure,  as  both  false  in  philosophy  and  contrary  to  the  Holy 
Scripture.  Fromundus  of  Antwerp,  under  sanction  of  the 
Theological  Faculty  of  Louvain,  defended  this  decree  of  the 
Inquisition  in  a  work  styled  "Anti-Aristarchus,"  with  citations 
from  the  Scriptures  and  fathers,  and  supposed  scientific  ob- 
jections ;  such  as  that  the  wind  would  always  blow  from  the 
East,  and  buildings  fly  off  the  earth,  if  it  were  in  such  rapid 
motion.  A  learned  but  bigoted  Catholic,  Schoppius,  who 
witnessed  the  martyrdom  of  Bruno,  wrote  to  a  friend,  with 
sardonic  humor,  that  the  unhappy  man  had  gone  to  relate  in 
those  worlds  which  he  imagined,  how  the  Romans  treat  im- 
pious men  and  blasphemers.  Father  Caccini  received  Church 
promotion  for  preaching  a  denunciatory  sermon  against  Gali- 
leo from  the  punning  text,  "  Ye  men  of  Galilee,  why  stand  ye 
gazing  up  into  heaven  ?"  Cardinal  Bellarmin,  with  ■  other 
learned  doctors  of  the  Inquisition,  brought  against  him  the 
theological  argument,  that  his  theory  would  subvert  the  whole 
Christian  scheme  of  salvation,  especially  the  doctrines  of  the 
atonement  and  incarnation,  by  robbing  the  earth  of  its  moral 
importance  as  the  centre  of  the  world  between  heaven  and 
hell,  and  by  suggesting  other  races  in  the  planets,  who  were 
not  descended  from  Adam,  and  for  whom  Christ  had  not  died. 
The  Jesuit,  Melchior  Inchofer,  pronounced  the  opinion  of  the 
earth's  mobility  the  very  chief  of  heresies,  most  abominable 
and  pernicious,  less  to  be  tolerated  than  an  argument  against 
the  existence  of  God  or  the  immortality  of  the  soul.  Bossuet 
declared  his  adhesion  to  the  Ptolemaic  system  as  alone  Scrip- 
tural and  orthodox,  even  after  the  discoveries  of  Galileo,  Kep- 
ler and  Newton  had  been  almost  everywhere  accepted.  And 
from  that  day  to  this,  in  order  to  save  the  dogma  of  infalli- 
bility, Catholic  apologists,  such  as  Marini,  De  I'Epinois,  and 
De  Bonald,  have  been  striving  to  shift  the  blame  from  the 
Church  to  Galileo,  from  the  Cardinals  to  the  Pope,  from  the 
Pope  to  the  Cardinals,  from  both  to  Holy  Scripture  itself 

But  the   German    and  French  Protestants   were   not    less 


6o  The  Conflict  in  Astronomy.  [part  i. 

rash  in  their  apologetics.  Luther,  with  characteristic  blunt- 
ness,  denounced  Copernicus  as  an  upstart  astrologer,  who 
sought  notoriety  by  trying  to  overturn  the  whole  science  of 
astronomy,  as  if  the  earth  could  revolve  around  the  sun,  when 
the  Scriptures  tell  us  that  Joshua  commanded  the  sun  to  stand 
still,  and  not  the  earth.  The  mild  Melancthon,  in  his  "  Ele- 
ments of  Physical  Doctrine,"  not  only  reasoned  against  the  Co- 
pernican  theory  with  Scriptural  and  scientific  arguments,  but 
held  that  the  civil  authorities  ought  to  suppress  such  a  wicked 
and  atheistical  opinion.  Calvin  introduced  his  commentary 
on  Genesis  by  stigmatizing  as  utter  reprobates  those  who 
would  deny  that  the  circuit  of  the  heavens  is  finite  and  the 
earth  placed  like  a  little  globe  at  the  centre.  The  orthodox 
Turrettin,  while  yet  Newton  was  completing  the  demonstra- 
tions of  Kepler,  issued  from  Calvin's  chair  a  "  Compendium 
of  Theology,"  in  which,  with  a  scholastic  array  of  proof  texts, 
objections  and  answers,  he  argued  that  the  heavens,  sun  and 
moon  are  in  motion,  but  the  earth  is  at  rest.  And  at  a  still 
later  period  the  German  Rector  Hensel,  wrote  a  school- 
book  against  the  new  astronomy,  entitled  "  The  Restored  Mo- 
saic System  of  the  World,"  and  designed  for  the  praise  of  the 
great  Creator,  the  defence  of  the  truth  and  the  religious  in- 
struction of  the  young. 

The  English  apologists,  too,  were  still  reckless,  though 
they  entered  the  battle  with  a  better  knowledge  of  the  field. 
A  learned  layman,  John  Hutchinson,  in  a  collection  of  works 
with  such  opprobrious,  but  significant  titles  as  "Moses' 
Principia"  and  "Moses  without  the  Principia,"  led  a  party  of 
Cambridge  divines  against  Newton  himself  on  the  very  thea- 
tre of  his  triumphs.  Dr.  Samuel  Pike,  of  the  same  school, 
published  a  "  Sacred  Philosophy,"  in  which  he  aimed  to  ex- 
tract from  Holy  Scripture  the  true  principles  of  natural 
philosophy,  in  opposition  to  the  Principia  of  Newton.  Nu- 
merous Hutchinsonian  commentators,  such  as  Bishops  Home 
and  Horscly  and  President  Forbes,  have  also  criticised  the 
Newtonian  theory  in  a  more  or  less  polemic  spirit.  Dr.  John 
Owen,  the  great  Puritan  preacher,  termed  the  Copernican  sys- 
tem a  delusive  and  arbitrary  hypothesis,  contradicted  by  the 
obvious  sense  of  the  Scriptures  and  irreconcilable  with  their 


CHAP.  II.]  Italy,  England,  France,  Germany.  6 1 

teachings.  The  founder  of  Methodism,  John  Wesley,  in  a 
sermon  on  the  Vlllth  Psahn,  after  Derham  and  Huyghens 
had  associated  a  plurahty  of  worlds  with  revealed  truths, 
termed  that  opinion  the  palmary  argument  of  infidels,  and 
declared  he  would  doubt  it,  even  though  it  were  allowed  by 
all  the  philosophers  in  Europe,  Professor  De  Morgan  in- 
cludes in  his  "  Budget  of  Paradoxes  "  a  variety  of  anti-Coper- 
nican  treatises,  all  written  in  the  supposed  defence  of  Biblical 
truth.  Indeed,  it  was  not  long  since  a  Mr.  Ferdinand  P'itz- 
gerald  gravely  proposed  to  establish  in  opposition  to  the  New- 
tonian astronomy,  a  league,  a  journal  and  a  system  of  scienti- 
fic surveys  with  the  view  of  demonstrating  that  the  Bible- 
earth  is  not  a  rotating  globe,  but  a  flat,  motionless  plane.  And 
though  by  this  time  all  Christian  literature  has  become 
leavened  by  the  new  astronomical  ideas,  and  enriched  with 
magnificent  proofs  and  illustrations  of  the  divine  glory  in  the 
heavens,  yet  now  and  then  may  still  be  heard  mistaken  pro- 
tests, like  the  idle  shots  of  a  retreating  army. 

Astronomy  has  thus  been  made  a  battle-ground  by  both 
parties  of  extremists  for  nearly  three  centuries,  until  every  part 
of  the  science  has  been  fought  over  and  contested ;  sometimes 
with  infidel  triumphs,  which  have  been  no  gain  to  science,  and 
sometimes  with  apologetic  defeats,  which  have  proved  better 
than  victories  to  religion.  v 

The  Conflict  in  Geology. 
From  the  rational  side  of  geology  also  have  come  occa- 
sional assaults  against  the  revealed  doctrine  of  the  earth. 
The  battles  in  geometry  and  geography,  for  the  true  figure 
and  features  of  the  globe,  having  been  won,  terrestrial  physics 
and  chemistry  began  to  breed  new  controversies,  from  their 
popular  association  with  witchcraft  and  alchemy.  If  great 
divines,  like  Pope  Sylvester,  Albert  of  Bollstadt,  and  Roger 
Bacon  could  be  charged  with  Satanic  art  for  their  pursuit  of 
these  sciences,  it  was  surely  not  surprising  that  less  orthodox 
physicists  who  dabbled  in  magic,  such  as  Cardan,  John  Baptist 
Porta  and  Leopold  de  Medici,  should  suffer  the  same  persecu- 
tion, or  escape  it  only  by  hypocritical  disguises.  And  espe- 
cially would  this  be  so,  when  physical  research  began  to  bear 


62  The  Conflict  in  Geology.  [part  i. 

upon  palaeontology.  Sir  Charles  Lyell  suggests,  that  the  early 
Italian  geologists,  Vallisneri,  Scilla  and  Generelli,  who  held 
views  of -minerals,  fossils  and  strata  inconsistent  with. the  re- 
ceived Mosaic  cosmogony,  did  not  come  into  collision  with 
the  Church  authorities,  because  they  practiced  a  dissimulation 
warranted  by  the  fate  of  Galileo,  if  not  actually  tolerated  by 
the  Papal  court. 

There  was  afterwards,  however,  less  need  of  such  reserve 
among  the  so-called  brave  spirits  of  the  French  Academy. 
Buffon,  indeed,  may  have  somewhat  compromised  his  well- 
known  naturalism,  by  declaring,  in  his  guarded  recantation  to 
the  Sorbonne,  that  his  "Theory  of  the  Earth"  was  not  opposed 
to  the  writings  of  Moses,  but  only  offered  as  a  pure 
philosophical  supposition.  But  the  encyclopaedists,  Diderot, 
D'Alembert  and  D'Holbach  strove  to  organize  all  the  physi- 
cal sciences  so  thoroughly  in  the  interest  of  pantheism  and 
atheism,  that  Rousseau  himself  withdrew  from  their  com- 
pany. Voltaire,  finding  that  orthodoxy  claimed  the  Alpine 
fossil  shells  as  relics  of  the  Deluge,  scoffed  at  them  as  mere 
fantastic  freaks  of  nature,  or  scollops  dropped  by  returning 
Crusaders,  and  satirically  accused  the  Scripture  geologists, 
Burnet  and  Whiston,  of  destroying  and  renewing  the  earth 
which  Descartes  had  made,  as  easily  as  the  scene  changes  in 
a  play. 

In  English  geology  but  few  such  infidel,  missiles  would  seem 
to  have  been  hurled  directly  at  the  Scriptures.  The  false  Mo- 
saic cosmogonies  have  been  demolished  in  the  interest  of  re- 
ligious truth  by  enlightened  divines  such  as  Buckland,  Pye 
Smith  and  Hitchcock,  and  devout  laymen  such  as  Dawson, 
Dana,  Hugh  Miller  and  Guyot,  rather  than  by  freethinking 
men  of  science.  If  the  great  Scottish  geologist,  Hutton,  con- 
nected unscriptural  views  with  his  Plutonic  theory  of  strata 
and  his  doctrine  of  the  indefinite  antiquity  of  the  globe,  they 
are  not  expressed  in  his  writings,  though  often  charged  upon 
him  by  his  critics.  Lyell  very  seldom  spoke  of  the  Biblical 
geologists,  yet  evidently  relished  the  peculiar  irony  which  had 
made  Burnet's  "Sacred  Theory  of  the  Earth"  a  favorite  at 
the  Court  of  Charles  II.  and  pointed  Butler's  jest  in  Hudibras  : 


CHAP.  ii.J  Italy,  Eh'glaiid,  France,  Germany.  63 

"  He  knew  the  seat  of  Paradise, 
Could  tell  in  what  degree  it  lies  ; 
And,  as  he  was  disposed,  could  prove  it, 
Below  the  moon  or  else  above  it." 

Professor  Huxley,  with  less  reserve,  has  not  only  referred  to 
such  vagaries  of  commentators,  but  to  Genesis  itself,  as  the 
cosmogony  of  the  semi-barbarous  Hebrew,  to  be  classed  with 
the  myths  of  paganism. 

And  some  of  the  German  infidels  have  still  more  boldly 
fought  their  way  with  geological  weapons  to  the  same  ex- 
treme opinion.  After  the  rationalistic  critics  of  Scripture, 
from  Eichorn  to  Baur,  had  striven  to  reduce  the  hexaemeron, 
or  six  days'  creation,  to  a  mere  pious  fraud  for  the  institution 
of  the  Jewish  Sabbath,  or  a  legendary  cosmogony  of  oriental 
fancy,  it  was  natural  for  geologists  of  a  sceptical  turn  to  join 
in  the  attack  with  a  cross-fire  from  the  scientific  side.  Ac- 
cordingly, Humboldt  in  his  Cosmos,  and  Bunneister  and 
Vogt,  as  materialists,  in  their  natural  histories  of  creation,  dis- 
dained the  Mosaic  doctrine  of  a  Creator  as  a  mere  childish 
tradition  of  the  people  inconsistent  with  the  eternity  of  the 
earth,  and  sneered  at  the  creative  fiats  as  more  like  the  dra- 
matic edicts  of  a  constitutional  prince  than  a  worthy  account 
of  the  great  geological  epochs  and  catastrophes  which  were 
proceeding.  Schleiden,  as  an  idealist,  in  treating  of  the  mate- 
rialism of  modern  German  science,  was  fain  to  charge  it  upon 
the  fables  of  the  so-called  Biblical  history  of  the  Creation  and 
Deluge,  which  we  are  taught  from  childhood.  And  Strauss, 
ever  ready  to  fling  any  stone,  exposed  the  seemingly  unscien- 
tific character  of  Genesis,'the  creation  of  vegetation  before  the 
sun,  of  the  earth  before  the  fixed  stars,  of  plants  and  animals 
in  a  few  hours,  and  ridiculed  the  conciliatory  schemes  of 
divines  as  attempts  to  make  a  Hebrew  seer  speak  like  a 
modern  geologist. 

But  from  the  revealed  side  of  the  science,  meanwhile,  have 
come  continual  assaults  against  the  rational  theory  of  the 
earth.  As  the  early  geographers,  Columbus  and  Magellan, 
had  been  opposed  with  Scripture  texts  and  church  decrees,  so 
the  physicists  and  chemists,  such  as  Porta  and  Becker,  were 
in  their  turn  accused  of  practicing  the  forbidden  arts  of  sor- 


64  Tlic  Co)iflict  hi  Geology.  [part.  i. 

eery,  or  resorting  to  an  alchemy  which  Solomon  had  dis- 
credited by  sending  ships  to  Ophir  for  gold.  After  Fracas- 
toro  and  Scilla  began  to  suggest  the  marine  and  animal  origin 
of  mountain  fossils,  the  curious  objects  were  still  treasured  in  the 
Vatican  cabinets  as  debris  of  Noah's  flood,  or  off-cast  moulds 
of  the  Creator,  left  for  the  trial  of  our  faith.  The  regular 
growth  of  strata  by  aqueous  agencies,  as  suggested  by  Val- 
lisneri,  was  held  to  be  inconsistent  with  the  dogma  of  St. 
Jerome,  that  the  earth  had  been  disordered  and  cursed  for 
man's  sake.  And  though  at  the  corrupt  Court  of  Clement 
VII.,  the  Carmelite  Friar,  Generelli,  could  lead  the  Academi- 
cians in  ridiculing  the  Protestant  cosmogonies  of  Burnet  and 
Whiston,  yet  this  was  but  a  truce  before  the  warfare  on  other 
fields.  The  Theological  Faculty  of  Paris  had  already  put 
chemical  science  under  the  ban  as  a  black  art,  and  afterwards 
condemned  the  great  mineralogist,  Bernard  Palissy,  and  other 
French  geologists,  for  denying  the  miraculous  origin  of  fossils 
and  the  universality  of  the  Flood.  The  same  authorities  at  a 
later  period  censured  Buffon's  theory  of  the  gradual  formation 
of  continents  as  incompatible  with  the  creative  days  of  Moses, 
and  required  him  to  insert  his  courteous  disclaimer  in  the  next 
edition  of  his  works.  The  Protestant  geologist,  De  Luc,  in 
replying  to  Hutton,  prefaced  his  treatise  with  remarks  upon 
the  infidel  tendencies  of  the  science  in  having  become  so 
anti-Mosaical. 

But  it  was  among  the  English  apologists  that  the  attack 
at  length  grew  fierce  and  desperate.  The  sacred  cosmogo- 
nies of  Burnet  and  Whiston,  referring  the  creation  to  six 
literal  days,  and  the  Deluge  to  the  shock  of  a  comet  or  some 
such  catastrophe,  had  become  as  deeply  imbedded  in  ortho- 
doxy as  once  were  the  astronomy  of  Ptolemy  and  the  Chris- 
tian geography  of  Cosmas,  and  any  different  views  were 
quickly  pronounced  heretical  and  unscriptural.  The  Edin- 
burgh ministers  charged  the  Huttonian  theory  of  a  secular 
growth  and  decay  of  strata  with  atheism  and  infidelity,  dis- 
guised under  the  pagan  notion  of  the  eternity  of  matter.  De- 
vout laymen,  such  as  the  distinguished  mineralogists,  Kirvvan 
and  William,  also  deprecated  it  as  nothing  less  than  an  attempt 
to  depose  the  Almighty  Creator  from  His  office.    The  Wood- 


CHAP.  II.]         Italy,  England,  France,  Ga-many.  65 

wardian  chair  of  mineralogy,  with  its  Hutchinsonian  collec- 
tions, stood  resisting  the  growing  evidence  of  any  organic 
remains  before  Adam,  as  contraiy  to  the  Scripture  statement 
that  death  came  into  the  world  by  man;  and  even  after  the 
fossiliferous  strata  had  been  tabulated,  they  were  still  claimed 
by  Granville  Penn  and  M'Farlane  as  successive  deposits  of  the 
Flood,  or  buried  ruins  of  the  Fall.  The  Rev.  Mellor  Brown, 
as  if  to  cut  the  geological  knot,  desperately  declared  it  his 
highest  conception  of  creation  that  fossils,  together  with  living 
structures,  should  start  into  being  by  a  single  fiat  of  Almighty 
God.  And  another  "  English  Clergyman,"  mentioned  by 
Hugh  Miller,  carried  such  reasoning  to  a  fit  climax  by  appeal- 
ing to  certain  fossils,  supposed  to  have  been  visibly  forming 
under  recent  influences,  as  "  created  on  purpose  to  silence  the 
horrid  blasphemies  of  the  geologists."  American  apologists, 
also,  such  as  Professor  Stuart  of  Andover,  and  Dr.  David 
Lord  of  the  Theological  Review,  were  trying  to  prove,  against 
the  accumulating  testimony  of  Christian  geologists  in  favor 
of  long  organic  eras,  that  the  earth  must  have  been  created 
in  six  working  days,  from  morning  to  evening,  in  order  to  lay 
a  foundation  for  the  Jewish  and  Christian  sabbath.  At  the 
same  time,  during  all  this  warfare,  the  struggling  science  itself 
was  variously  denounced  by  such  writers  as  a  dark  art,  a  for- 
bidden province,  an  awful  evasion  of  the  testimony  of  Scrip- 
ture, essentially  infidel  and  atheistic ;  and  scarcely  yet  have 
learned  pulpits  ceased  to  resound  with  the  sarcastic  invective 
of  Covvper,  against  such  as 

"  drill  and  bore 
The  solid  earth,  and  from  the  strata  there 
Extract  a  register  by  which  we  learn 
That  He  who  made  it,  and  revealed  its  date 
To  Moses,  was  mistaken  in  its  age." 

Geology,  it  will  be  seen,  is  still  in  the  thick  of  a  battle, 
which  infidels  and  apologists  are  waging  for  its  possession, 
with  manoeuvres  so  swift  and  brilliant,  that  the  lines  of  offence 
from  science  are  scarcely  formed  before  they  become  lines  of 

defence  for  religion. 

I 


65  The  Conflict  in  Anthropology.  [part  i. 


0 


The  Conflict  in  Anthropology. 


From  the  rational  side  of  anthropology  already  a  combined 
attack  seems  aimed  at  the  whole  revealed  doctrine  of  man- 
kind. This  complex  science,  with  its  roots  in  natural  history 
and  its  branches  in  physiology,  ethnology  and  archaeology, 
could  hardly  fail  to  suggest  infidel  doubts  to  many  minds  ;  and 
there  must,  therefore,  have  been  some  wide  foundation  for  the 
mediaeval  proverb,  "  Where  there  are  three  physicians,  there 
are  two  atheists."  It  should  also  be  remembered  that  medi- 
cine itself,  as  practiced  by  Arnold  de  Villa  Nuova,  was  asso- 
ciated in  the  popular  view  with  Mohammedanism  as  well  as 
sorcery,  and  that  martyrs  of  demonstrative  anatomy,  like  Ve- 
salius,  had  to  encounter  a  vulgar  prejudice  and  instinctive  ab- 
horrence quite  as  much  as  any  mere  theological  hatred.  And 
morever,  the  later  anthropological  sciences  had  not  begun  to 
trench  upon  the  Mosaic  doctrine  of  races.  It  could  hardly 
have  been  mere  zeal  for  scientific  truth  which  prompted  Bruno 
to  term  Adam  the  father  of  the  Jewish  people  alone,  when  as 
yet  ethnology  was  unknown ;  or  La  Peyrere  to  appeal  from 
Genesis  to  pre-adamite  tribes  in  America,  before  archaeology 
was  inquiring  into  their  origin ;  or  De  Maillet,  in  an  ironical 
sketch,  to  anticipate  the  transmutationists  by  depicting  animals 
and  men  as  amphibious  products  of  the  Deluge.  It  has  been 
reserved  for  our  times,  and  at  the  outset  for  American  and 
English  writers,  to  give  such  doubts  a  scientific  air.  Doc- 
tors Nott  and  Gliddon,  in  their  "Types  of  Mankind,"  and 
again  in  their  "  Indigenous  Races  of  the  Earth,"  have  scattered 
among  valuable  memoirs  a  variety  of  sceptical  objections  to 
the  Mosaic  doctrine  of  the  human  creation,  which  they  term 
a  crude  and  juvenile  hypothesis.  Professor  Huxley,  in  his 
Reviews  and  Lay  Sermons,  speaks  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures 
as  the  chief  obstacle  to  Darwinism,  and  regards  their  view  of 
the  creation  of  man  as  belonging  only  to  the  infancy  of  sci- 
ence. Sir  John  Lubbock,  though  he  never  directly  assails  the 
Biblical  anthropologists  in  his  works  on  pre-historic  man  and 
the  origin  of  civilization,  has  characterized  Adam  as  a  typical 


CHAP.  II.]  Italy,  England,  France,  Gcnnany.  67 

savage,  in  his  religion  as  well  as  in  other  respects,  and  denies 
the  fall  of  the  race  from  a  primitive  revelation.  Charles  Bray- 
has  issued  a  manual  of  anthropology,  in  which  he  collates  the 
chief  authorities  of  the  science  against  the  whole  Scripture 
doctrine  of  man.  And  the  latest  German  utterances  of  the 
school  are  still  more  extreme  and  outspoken.  Professor 
Haeckel  of  Jena,  in  a  memoir  on  the  genealogy  of  the  human 
race,  maintains  that  second  only  to  the  geocentric  error,  which 
made  the  earth  the  pivot  of  the  whole  physical  universe,  is  the 
arithropocentric  error,  which  makes  man  the  image  of  God 
and  central  object  of  the  organic  creation,  and  that  the  latter 
error  has  been  destroyed  by  Lamarck,  Goethe  and  Darwin, 
as  was  the  former  by  Galileo,  Kepler  and  Newton.  Dr.  Biich- 
ner  of  Darmstadt,  in  his  "  Man  of  the  Past,  Present  and  Future," 
simply  traces  the  race  from  an  animal,  through  a  savage,  into 
a  civilized  state,  arraying  all  anthropological  research,  with 
sardonic  coolness,  against  the  Biblical  doctrines  of  the  crea- 
tion, fall  and  redemption  of  mankind.  Strauss,  with  Clara- 
pede,  has  said,  he  would  rather  be  a  perfectionated  ape  than  a 
degenerate  Adam,  as  one  might  choose  for  an  ancestor  some 
rising  citizen  rather  than  a  mere  dissolute  Count.  And  Pro- 
fessor Carl  Vogt,  in  his  Lectures  on  Anthropology,  as  if  to 
defy  all  religious  prejudice,  not  only  denies  the  special  crea- 
tion of  man  in  the  divine  image,  but,  among  other  profane  and 
indecent  retorts  of  orthodox  scorn,  dares  to  classify  certain 
crania  of  the  simian  type  as  Nazarene  or  Apostle  skulls. 

At  the  same  time,  from  the  revealed  side  of  the  science,  the 
forces  are  mustering  against  the  whole  rational  theory  of  the 
human  race.  And  as  yet,  it  would  seem,  with  no  very  formi- 
dable array.  The  great  discoveries  of  antiquarians,  from 
ChampoUion  to  Lepsius,  are  to  be  opposed  with  the  Biblical 
chronology  of  Archbishop  Usher,  as  fixed  by  act  of  Parlia- 
ment. The  profound  researches  of  linguists,  from  Humboldt 
to  Whitney,  are  to  be  met  with  the  pious  tradition  that  He- 
brew was  the  language  of  Paradise,  preserved  through  the  con- 
fusion of  tongues  at  Babel.  And  as  to  the  ethnological  and 
physiological  questions,  there  are  signs  of  a  recklessness 
worthy  the  darkest  ages  of  the  Church.  As  Virgilius,  in  the 
eighth  century,  was  all  but  anathematized  for  his  notion  of  an- 


6S  Tlie  Conflict  in  the  Psychical  Sciences.         [part  i. 

tipodes,  on  the  ground  that  it  would  break  the  unity  of  the 
First  Adam,  so  the  guardians  of  orthodoxy  in  our  day  are  de- 
nouncing Agassiz  and  Forbes  for  a  theory  of  co-adamite- races, 
which  might  really  support  their  own  doctrine  of  a  high 
Adamic  covenant,  as  distinguished  from  mere  inherited  sin. 
The  charges  of  atheism  and  infidelity,  which  were  hurled  at 
devout  naturalists  in  the  middle  ages,  are  now  brought  as  in- 
discriminately against  all  Darwinians  alike,  lay  and  clerical, 
Mivart  and  Brown,  Henslow  and  St.  Clair,  Peabody  and  Gray, 
in  spite  of  their  repeated  protests.  And  the  efforts  of  Roman 
cardinals  in  the  fifteenth  century,  and  French  and  English 
theologians  in  later  times,  to  stir  up  popular  odium  against 
dissections  as  a  desecration  of  the  divine  image,  and  against 
vaccination  and  chloroform  as  an  impious  evasion  of  the  curse 
upon  man  and  woman,  may  find  some  parallel  in  the  invidious 
sneers  of  distinguished  divines  at  the  researches  of  compara- 
tive anatomists,  though  Calvin  himself  taught  lessons  of 
humility  from  the  earthly  origin  and  animal  formation  of 
Adam.  Archbishop  Sumner,  in  his  Records  of  Creation, 
speaks  of  them  as  having  taken  an  extraordinary  pleasure  in 
levelling  the  broad  distinction  between  man  and  the  brute 
creation.  Dr.  Jacobus,  in  his  Notes  on  Genesis,  would  seem 
to  concede  to  them  no  more  valuable  aim  or  attainment  than 
the  questionable  satisfaction  of  finding  their  paternity  in  the 
ape.  Dr.  Delitzsch  of  Leipsic,  in  his  Biblical  Psychology,  with 
a  refined  disdain  which  could  only  have  been  provoked  by  the 
coarseness  of  a  Biichner  or  a  Vogt,  hints  that  they  must  first 
have  essentially  brutalized  themselves  before  they  could  even 
entertain  their  peculiar  theories  of  the  animal  origin  of  man. 

Anthropology  as  yet  is  but  a  comparatively  untrodden 
field,  in  which  infidels  and  apologists  are  only  beginning  to 
reconnoitre  and  skirmish;  and  it  is  too  soon  to  judge  of  their 
relative  strength  cither  for  the  promotion  of  true  science,  or 
the  vindication  of  sound  religion. 

Entering  next  the  psychical  sciences,  Psychology,  Sociology, 
and  Theology,  where  the  human  interests  involv^cd  are  so 
much  more  intense,  we  shall  there  find  the  two  extremists, 
contending  still    more  fiercely,  on  the  field  of  each  science, 


CHAP.  II.]  Italy,  England,  France,  Germany.  69 

from  land  to  land,  century  after  century,  like  long-embittered 
foes  fighting  their  battles  over  again  with  only  a  change  of 
tactics  and  weapons. 

If  in  the  physical  sciences  we  have  seen  infidels  but  seldom 
beginning  the  offensive  against  their  assailants,  we  shall  now 
behold  the  warfare  reversed,  and  apologists  often  put  upon 
the  defensive  by  the  most  terrible  onsets  ;  and  whereas  the  con- 
flict has  hitherto  mostly  appeared  in  the  regions  of  positive 
science,  of  ascertained  facts  and  laws,  it  will  hereafter  be  found 
very  largely  a  war  of  opposing  theories  and  notions,  owing  to 
the  more  imperfect  state  of  the  psychical  sciences. 

The  Conflict  in  Psychology. 

From  the  rational  side  of  psychology  there  have  been  in- 
cessant attacks  upon  the  revealed  doctrine  of  the  soul.  Long 
before  the  close  connections  of  this  science  with  physiology 
had  been  explored,  or  any  fixed  mental  laws  were  conjectured, 
sceptical  doubts  were  broached  as  to  man's  immortality-  and 
responsibility.  The  Italian  infidels  made  their  attack  covertly 
under  a  revived  Aristotelianism.  Pomponatius,  the  master  of 
the  school,  taught  with  the  Stagyrite,  in  a  work  misnamed 
the  "  Immortality  of  the  Soul,"  that  the  mind  is  inseparable 
from  the  body  and  perishable  with  it,  and  disingenuously 
cited  Homer,  Pliny  and  Seneca,  as  examples  of  virtue  without 
the  motives  of  a  future  life,  whilst  himself  accepting  the 
grossest  practical  consequences  of  his  theory.  Achillini  and 
Nipho,  though  adversaries  of  Pomponatius,  would  simply  have 
dissolved  the  individual  soul  in  the  general  soul  of  the  world. 
Jerome  Cardan,  according  to  Warburton,  justified  these 
opinions  on  the  ground  of  state-policy,  arguing  that  the  be- 
lief in  a  vague  immortality  only  destroys  the  present  influence 
of  the  good,  and  gives  license  to  the  bad.  Cremoninus,  who 
wrote  upon  the  senses  and  the  appetites,  expressed  the  grow- 
ing depravity  of  the  school  in  the  atrocious  maxim  that  vice 
itself  was  a  privilege  of  the  clergy.  And  even  Pope  Leo  X. 
and  Cardinal  Bembo,  are  suspected  of  having  hypocritically 
issued  a  bull  against  these  heresies,  as  a  mere  idle  fulmination 
to  blind  the  populace. 


70  The  Conflict  in  Psychology.  [part  I. 

The  English  infidels  made  their  attack  more  openly  and 
powerfully  with  the  empiricism  of  Bacon  and  Lo£ke. 
Thomas  Hobbes  of  Malmesbury,  the  founder  of  the  school,  in 
his  various  writings  on  "  Human  Nature "  and  "  Necessity 
and  Chance,"  merged  the  mind  in  the  body  as  affected  and 
impressed  by  other  bodies  through  the  brain ;  subjected  the 
will  to  physical  compulsion,  and  reduced  conscience  itself  to 
a  mere  balancing  of  sensuous  pain  and  pleasure.  Dr.  William 
Coward,  whose  work  entitled  "  Second  Thoughts  concerning 
the  Human  Soul,"  was  ordered  to  be  burned  by  the  common 
hangman,  argued  that  the  traditional  notion  of  an  immaterial, 
immortal  spirit  united  to  the  body,  was  a  plain  heathenish  in- 
vention and  philosophic  imposture,  as  all  thought  results  from 
mere  matter  and  motion.  Anthony  Collins,  the  champion  of 
the  free  thinkers,  not  only  defended  the  natural  mortality  of 
the  soul,  but  in  his  "Philosophical  Inquiry  concerning  Human 
Liberty  and  Necessity,"  undermined  all  moral  responsibility, 
by  enchaining  the  will  in  mere  physical  causation.  Shaftes- 
bury and  Bolingbroke,  making  ridicule  their  test  of  truth, 
politely  sneered  at  the  Christian  graces  of  humility,  penitence 
and  meekness,  as  essentially  mean  and  degrading ;  while 
Thomas  Chubb  coarsely  scoffed  at  future  moral  awards  as 
no  more  likely  than  a  Divine  judgment  of  the  animals.  Ber- 
nard Mandeville,  a  French  physician  in  London,  as  if  to 
throw  off  all  disguises,  in  his  "  Fable  of  the  Bees  or  Knaves 
turned  Honest,"  boldly  reversed  the  distinction  between  right 
and  wrong,  by  defending  the  atrocious  paradox  that  private 
vices  are  public  benefits.  And  at  length  this  desolating  tide 
of  scepticism  came  to  the  flood  in  David  Hume,  whose  essays 
on  the  passions,  on  immortality,  and  on  suicide,  reduced  man 
to  a  mere  irresponsible  animal,  denied  all  future  judgment  as 
impossible  and  absurd,  and  held  the  life  of  a  man  at  no  higher 
price  than  that  of  an   oyster. 

But  the  French  infidels  of  the  last  century  even  more 
recklessly  overran  all  morality,  as  well  as  spirituality,  with 
the  sensualism  of  Condillac.  Claude  Helvetius,  a  literary 
protege  of  Voltaire  and  the  chief  propagandist  of  the  school, 
in  his  famous  treatise  on  "The  Spirit,"  maintained  that  the  soul 
is  but  organized  matter,  pleasure  the  chief  good,  and  virtue 


CHAP.  II.]  Italy,  England,  France,  Germany.  yi 

and  vice  due  to  mere  animal  sensibility  as  modified  by  climate. 
Julius  de  la  Mettrie,  whose  "  Man  the  Machine,"  and  "  Man 
the  Plant,"  were  publicly  burned  as  offensive  to  good  morals, 
described  the  mind  as  but  a  piece  of  perishable  mechanism, 
and  deduced  without  reserve  the  vilest  inferences  of  the  theory 
in  a  treatise  on  the  School  of  Pleasure,  or  Art  of  Enjoyment. 
And  at  length  Baron  D'Holbach  and  his  confreres,  in  their 
"  System  of  Nature,"  reduced  this  mass  of  sensuality  and  fatal- 
ism to  a  compend,  which  Voltaire  himself,  in  a  lucid  moment, 
declared  to  be  simply  detestable. 

And  yet  the  German  infidels  of  our  day  would  seem  to 
have  plunged  into  a  still  lower  and  grosser  materialism  from 
the  idealism  of  Hegel.  Louis  Feuerbach,  as  fiery  by  nature 
as  by  name,  well  styled  the  modern  Porphyry,  taking  the 
brain  as  the  highest  product  and  organ  of  the  absolute  rea- 
son in  the  Hegelian  dialectic,  has  sought  to  identify  thought 
with  its  phosphorous  substance,  and  gravely  argued  that  we 
are  what  we  eat ;  that  the  future  progress  of  science  de- 
pends upon  a  more  phosphoric  diet  than  potatoes  ;  and  that 
at  death  the  so-called  soul  goes  down  into  the  dust  to  become 
the  fresh  fuel  of  life.  Carl  Yjogt,  in  his  "Types  of  Animal  Life," 
recalling  a  bold  figure  of  Cabanis,  still  more  grossly  describes 
thought  as  a  mere  secretion  of  the  brain,  like  that  of  the  liver 
or  the  kidney ;  asserts  that  we  have  no  more  power  over  our 
intellectual  faculties  than  over  such  bodily  organs ;  and  reck- 
lessly denies  that  there  is  any  such  thing  as  free-will,  moral 
accountability,  or  any  future  rewards  and  punishments.  J. 
Moleschott,  in  his  "  Circulation  of  Life,"  descends  from  the  stye 
to  the  charnel-house,  declaring  not  merely  that  mind  is  a 
mere  movement  of  matter  and  function  of  the  brain,  but  that 
the  only  immortality  is  that  of  the  disintegrated  body,  whose 
ammonia,  carbonic  acid  and  lime  have  served  to  enrich  the 
earth,  and  nourish  plants  and  animals,  to  feed  the  brains  of 
other  generations  of  men.  And  Biichner,  in  his  treatise  on 
'•  Matter  and  Force,"  as  if  to  find  a  lower  depth,  after  tracing 
man  from  the  dust  to  the  animal  and  back  to  dust,  consistently 
hints  that  a  dying  philosopher  of  the  right  temper  might 
rather  be  devoured  by  crows  than  have  Christian  burial. 

From  the  revealed  side  of  the  science,  meanwhile,  there  have 


72  TJlc  Conflict  in  Psychology.  [part.  i. 

been  constant  recoils  against  the  rational  theory  of  the  body. 
As  Plato  and  Aristotle,  by  turns,  had  been  anathematized  in 
the  Church,  so  Descartes,  with  his  proffered  proofs  of  immor- 
tality, was  censured  by  the  Sorbonne  and  the  Synod  of  Dort ; 
while  Locke,  with  his  notion  of  cogitative  matter  as  a  germ  of 
the  resurrection,  was  repudiated  by  the  Cambridge  divines. 
If  the  infamous  works  of  La  Mettrie  and  D'Holbach  were 
justly  condemned  to  the  flames,  yet  their  germinal  principles 
had  already  been  broached  by  Fathers  Gassendi  and  Condil- 
lac,  as  well  as  by  Hartley  and  Bonnet,  who  even  sought  to 
combine  them  with  the  Christian  faith.  And  at  the  same 
time,  the  defensive  weapons  which  were  forged  in  the  Church 
against  the  new  psychologic  theories,  often  proved  less  de- 
structiv^e  in  their  attack  than  in  their  rebound.  The  Italian 
apologists  hastily  armed  themselves  with  a  renewed  Pla- 
tonism.  Marsilius  Ficinus,  chief  of  the  school  at  Florence, 
in  a  treatise  on  the  Platonic  Immortality  and  Eternal  Felicity 
of  Souls,  held  the  mind  to  be  a  divine  energy,  or  spiritual  ema- 
nation imprisoned  in  the  body,  from  which  it  was  to  be  lib- 
erated and  resolved  into  deity  by  an  ascetic  life.  The  two 
Picos  of  Mirandola,  uncle  and  nephew,  mingled  cabalistic  or 
Jewish  traditions  with  the  new  Platonism,  and  carried  their 
spiritualistic  principles  into  practice  to  the  extreme  of  enthu- 
siastic self-sacrifice.  And  later  followers  of  the  school  in 
other  countries,  such  as  Paracelsus,  Von  Helmont,  and  Fludd, 
were  at  length  landed  in  extravagancies  akin  to  modern  clair- 
voyance, animal  magnetism  and  spiritism. 

The  English  apologists  more  vigorously  reinforced  the  spirit- 
ualism of  Plato.  Ralph  Cu^worth,  the  leader  of  the  Cambridge 
Platonists  and  chief  antagonist  of  Hobbes,  in  his  "Intellectual 
System,"  defined  the  soul  as  a  plastic  mind  or  intelligent  force, 
moulding  and  sustaining  even  the  body  itself;  and  afterwards 
maintained  its  absolute  independence  and  liberty,  in  a  treatise 
on  Free-will.  Henry  More,  so  fastidious  an  intellectual  epi- 
cure that  he  is  said  to  have  been  ashamed  of  having  a  body, 
not  only  discoursed  apologetically  on  immortality  and  free- 
will, but  in  a  "Platonic  Song  of  the  Soul,"  depicted  the  fu- 
ture disembodied  spirit,  indissoluble  and  yet  diffused,  lumi- 
nous and  endowed  with  plastic  and  percijaicnt  powers : 


CHAP.  II.]         Italy,  England,  France,  Germany.  73 

"  Like  naked  lamp,  she  is  one  shining  sphere, 
And  round  about  has  perfect  cognoscence, 
Whate'er  in  her  horizon  doth  appear. 
She  is  one  orb  of  sense,  all  eye,  all  airy  ear." 

John  Smith,  another  disciple  of  the  same  school,  added  to  this 
picture  of  the  immortal  soul  that  of  her  future  spiritual  body, 
as  no  mere  gross  complex  of  bones  and  flesh,  but  her  aerial 
mantle  and  vehicle.  Dr.  Samud_Clarke,  the  redoubtable  ad- 
versary of  Collins  and  Coward,  in  order  to  refute  their  notion 
of  the  naturaf  mortality  of  the  soul,  metaphysically  distin- 
guished it  from  the  body  as  an  indivisible  substance,  endowed 
with  an  indivisible  consciousness,  and  therefore  indissoluble 
by  death.  At  length  Bishop  Berkeley,  recoiling  by  his  own 
ponderous  blows  to  the  opposite  extreme  from  Hobbes,  in  his 
"  Dialogue  between  Hylas  and  Philonous,"  (a  materialist  and 
spiritualist),went  so  far  as  to  question  the  materiality  of  the 
whole  external  world,  leaving  nothing  in  the  universe  but 
spirits  impressing  each  other  with  ideas.  And  other  like- 
minded  apologists,  such  as  Norris  and  Collier,  were  driven 
beyond  this  extreme  into  a  paradoxical  denial  of  the  externality 
as  well  as  materiality  of  all  sensible  existence. 

The  French  apologists  took  refuge  in  the  dualism  of 
Descartes.  Blaise  Pascal,  whose  satirical  "  Letters  "  have  made 
the  very  name  of  Jesuit  synonymous  with  loose  ethics,  adopt- 
ing into  his  theology  the  Cartesian  distinction  between  matter 
and  spirit  as  two  separate  inscrutable  essences,  consistently 
depicted  the  immortal  soul  as  a  fallen  Lucifer,  chained  to  a 
body  of  death.  Arnold  Geulinx  of  Louvain,  the  Calvinistic 
Expounder  of  Descartes,  in  his  "  Annotations,"  correlated 
soul  and  body  as  two  mere  passive  instruments  of  Deity,  co- 
acting  in  thought  and  sensation,  and  inferentially  resolved  the 
very  dictates  of  virtue  into  divine  decrees.  Anthony  Arnaud, 
the  great  Catholic  expounder  of  the  school,  in  a  treatise 
upon  ideas,  referred  them  to  the  mind  as  distinguished  from 
matter;  derived  them  from  a  sort  of  occult  suggestion  of  God  ; 
and  based  all  our  knowledge  on  the  divine  veracity  alone. 
At  length  Father  Malebranche,  the  austere  monk  of  the  Ora- 
tory, who  scorned   alike  the  learned  and   the  great,  in  his 


74  The  Conflict  in  Psychology.  [part  i. 

"  Search  for  Truth,"  degraded  the  body  into  a  mere  animal  ma- 
chine; subHmed  the  soul  into  a  pure  spirit  beholding  all  things 
in  God,  their  only  revealer  as  well  as  creator ;  and  dis- 
dained even  the  sensible  evidence  of  an  external  world,  except 
as  confirmed  by  the  Holy  Scriptures  and  the  Catholic  Church. 
From  such  extravagant  spiritualism,  it  was  not  strange  that 
afterwards  there  should  have  come  that  rebound  to  the  ma- 
terialism of  the  Encyclopaedia,  which  the  efforts  of  Bergier, 
Ploucquet  and  Lussac  could  not  arrest. 

The  German  apologists  meanwhile  were  entrenching  them- 
selves in  the  monadism  of  Leibnitz.  Christian  Wolf,  the 
organizer  of  the  school,  assuming  the  Leibnitzian  definition  of 
the  soul  as  a  spiritual  monad  or  conscious  force,  was  endea- 
voring by  purely  metaphysical  proofs  to  demonstrate  the 
dogmas  of  its  immateriality,  accountability  and  futurity ;  but 
since  Kant  and  his  idealistic  disciples,  by  their  rational  criti- 
cism, have  exposed  both  the  dogmas  and  the  proofs  to  fresh 
suspicion  and  overthrow,  it  has  only  remained  to  repair  the 
fortress  from  the  old  arsenals,  or  defend  it  with  new  arma- 
ments. Dr.  Francis  Hettinger,  Roman  Catholic  professor  at 
Marburg,  in  his  Apology  for  Christianity,  has  revived  the  sen- 
sitive, vegetative  and  rational  soul  of  St.  Aquinas  as  substan- 
tially expressed  in  the  body,  in  opposition  to  the  chief  scien- 
tific authorities  of  recent  materialism.  Dr.  Luthardt  of  Leipsic, 
in  his  popular  Apologetical  Lectures,  also  meets  the  assaults 
of  Feuerbach,  Vogt,  and  Bijchner,  with  the  traditional  concep- 
tion of  the  soul  as  a  mental,  moral  and  religious  principle, 
involved  in  the  bodily  organism,  yet  essentially  independent 
and  superior,  as  consciousness  testifies.  Professor  Hermann 
Ulrici,  in  his  masterly  treatise  on  "God  and  Man,"  against  the 
psychological  materialists,  defines  the  soul  as  a  psychic  force 
blending  with  the  plastic  force  of  the  body,  and  pervading  its 
atomic  structure  like  an  atomless  fluid,  yet  with  a  conscious- 
ness ever  distinguishing  it  from  the  body,  from  other  embo- 
died souls,  and  from  the  Divine  Spirit.  Professor  Rudolf 
Wagner,  the  distinguished  physicist,  has  charged  the  current 
materialism  with  a  non-scientific  character  and  immoral  ten- 
dency ;  and  having  remarked  in  a  convention  of  naturalists, 
that  he  preferred  the  faith  of  a  collier  to  the  speculation  of  a 


CHAP.  II.]  Italy,  Eiigland,  France,  Germany.  75 

scientist,  was  assailed  by  Carl  Vogt  with  a  satirical  pamphlet 
entitled,  "  Collier's  Faith  and  Science,"  to  which  he  gave  the 
rejoinder,  "  Knowledge  and  Faith,"  maintaining  therein  the 
substantiality  of  the  soul  as  a  sort  of  ether  in  the  brain,  which 
after  death  may  acquire  locomotive  power  as  swift  as  the 
light  of  the  sun,  together  with  a  capacity  for  localization,  and 
perhaps  even  re-incarnation  upon  earth.  Other  apologists, 
by  renovating  the  atomism  of  Leibnitz,  are  striving  to- resolve 
the  body  itself  into  a  mere  congeries  of  spiritual  forces,  or 
phenomenal  manifestation  of  the  soul ;  while  some  in  their 
zeal  to  keep  soul  and  body  distinct,  are  relapsing  toward  the 
mechanical  dualism  of  Descartes. 

And  now,  as  an  antithesis  to  the  wildest  materialism  on  the 
infidel  side,  we  have  the  American  school  of  so-called  spirit- 
ualists, or  spiritists,  led  by  the  Poughkeepsie  seer,  Andrew 
Jackson  Davis,  and  Judge  Edwards,  who  claim  to  bring  new 
sensible  evidence  of  immortality  and  the  whole  unseen  world, 
by  means  of  telegraphic  communications  with  apostles,  saints, 
heroes  and  deceased  friends,  together  with  materializations 
of  spirit,  levitations  of  matter,  and  other  such  phenomena, 
surpassing  the  wildest  necromancy  of  the  middle  ages. 

The  conflict  in  psychology,  after  having  been  waged  for 
centuries,  has  at  length  come  to  close  quarters,  and  infidels 
and  apologists  are  fighting  hand  to  hand,  as  if  for  the  very 
truth  of  science  and  life  of  religion. 

The  Conflict  in  Sociology. 

From  the  rational  side  of  sociology,  likewise,  have  come 
frequent  assaults  upon  the  revealed  doctrine  of  the  Church  or 
spiritual  organization  of  society.  When  this  intricate  science 
was  unknown  and  while  as  yet  its  various  departments,  politics, 
political  economy,  history  of  civilization,  philosophy  of  histoiy, 
were  treated  as  regions  of  mere  human  caprice  rather  than  of 
natural  law,  there  were  reckless  thinkers  seeking  to  impugn 
all  ethical  principles,  divine  institutions  and  supernatural  Pro- 
vidence. The  Italian  assault  was  opened  on  the  field  of  states- 
manship. Nicholas  Machiavelli,  of  whom  Bacon,  his  most 
charitable  critic,  has  said,  that  he  analyzed  the  impious  and 


76  Tlie  Conflict  in  Sociology.  [part  r, 

cruel  acts  of  despots  as  coolly  as  a  chemist  treats  of  poisons, 
published  a  work  styled  "The  Prince,"  which  exhibited  Caesar 
Borgia  as  a  model,  and  became  the  catechism  of  absolute 
monarchs ;  while,  in  his  History  of  Livy,  he  broached  fatalis- 
tic views  of  social  development,  and  based  his  ideal  state  on 
Pagan  rather  than  Christian  Rome.  Gabriel  Naude,  a  French 
infidel,  tolerated  at  the  papal  court,  is  said  by  Hallam  to  have 
taken  from  Machiavelli  the  political  considerations  on  state 
policy  with  which  he  sought  to  justify  the  massacre  of  St.  Bar- 
tholomew. And  Campanella,  with  still  more  paradoxical 
boldness,  in  one  of  his  treatises  proposed  to  the  Spanish 
monarch  a  universal  war  for  the  triumph  of  the  Papacy  over 
Protestant  and  Pagan  nations,  and  yet  in  another  treatise 
anticipated  the  most  visionary  socialists  of  our  time,  with 
opinions  wholly  subversive  of  property,  the  family,  and  the 
state. 

The  English  infidel  assault  was  extended  to  the  wider 
fields  of  political  science  and  general  history.  Thomas 
Hobbes,  who  translated  Thucydides  whilst  an  exile  from  the 
Commonwealth,  in  hopes  of  disgusting  his  countrymen  with 
the  evils  of  democracy,  in  his  treatise  well-named  "  Levia- 
than," represented  the  body  politic  as  a  huge  material  cor- 
poration without  souls  and  without  a  spiritual  God,  the  state 
as  mere  organized  might  trampling  upon  right,  the  church 
as  but  a  creature  of  the  state,  and  society  as  ever  at  the  alter- 
native of  despotism  or  anarchy.  Edward  Gibbon,  by  Byron 
styled  "  lord  of  irony,  sapping  a  solemn  creed  with  solemn 
sneer,"  professed  to  waive  the  pleasing  task  of  describing 
Christianity  as  she  descended  from  heaven  that  he  might 
depict  the  inevitable  mixture  of  error  and  corruption  which 
she  contracted  during  a  long  residence  upon  earth;  and  in  his 
"  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,"  lavished  the  most 
classical  English  in  the  language  upon  the  most  awful  specta- 
cle in  history,  only  to  ignore  her  claims  and  disparage  her 
charms.  And  later  English  writers,  such  as  Godwin,  Owen, 
and  Buckle,  have  made  their  still  more  direct  attacks  upon 
political  order  and  divine  Providence. 

The  French  infidel  assault  spread  through  civil  history  into 
political  economy  and  social  science.     Montesquieu,  who  re- 


CHAP.  II.]  Italy,  England,  France,  Germany.  'j'j 

fleeted  the  skepticism  of  his  time  in  his  "  Persian  Letters," 
and  his  speculations  upon  the  "  Grandeur  and  Decadence  of 
the  Romans,"  in  his  later  more  celebrated  treatise  on  the 
"  Spirit  of  Laws,"  dwelt  so  impressively  on  the  influence  of 
climate  and  other  physical  agencies  upon  civil  institutions, 
and  ignored  so  entirely  divine  Providence  in  human  affairs, 
that  the  Theological  Faculty  required  him  to  modify  subse- 
quent editions  of  the  work.  Volney,  whose  Catechism  of  a 
French  Citizen  is  but  the  condensed  ethics  of  atheistic  mate- 
rialism, in  his  "  Ruins  of  Empires"  wholly  obliterated  the 
supernatural  character  of  Christianity,  and  rendered  all  histor}- 
but  a  spectacle  of  hopeless  confusion  and  error.  Jean  Jacques 
Rousseau,  as  eccentric  in  his  politics  as  he  was  in  his  religion, 
recoiled  with  sentimental  misanthropy  from  the  vices  of  civili- 
zation to  an  original  state  of  nature  or  social  contract,  in 
which  he  dreamed  of  society  as  re-organized  on  a  basis  of 
savagery  and  impiety.  The  Marquis  of  Condorcet  sketched 
a  picture  of  human  progress  from  barbarism  to  an  ima- 
ginary social  perfection  as  effected  by  mere  physical  edu- 
cation without  Providence  and  without  morality.  And  at 
length  Auguste  Comte,  came  forward  with  his  "  Political 
Catechism,"  gravely  proposing  to  re-organize  society  as  a 
sort  of  atheistic  scientific  hierarchy,  literally  without  a  king 
and  without  a  God. 

But  the  great  German  infidel  assault  of  our  day  has  at 
last  stormed  the  speculative  heights  of  philosophical  his- 
tory. After  Lessing  had  belittled  the  whole  supernatural 
element  in  the  divine  education  of  the  human  race,  and  Hegel 
and  Schelling  had  involved  universal  history  in  their  supposed 
development  of  absolute  reason,  it  has  been  easy  for  their 
extreme  disciples  to  deduce  the  most  irreligious  views  of  so- 
cial progress.  Strauss,  in  his  celebrated  Life  of  Christ  and 
the  two  Bauers,  in  their  hi.stories  of  doctrine,  applying  the 
Hegelian  dialectic,  have  sought  to  resolve  ancient  Christi- 
anity into  a  mere  philosophical  mythology,  the  successive 
dogmas  of  the  Church  into  dry  logical  formulas,  and  all  ac- 
companying civilization  into  the  scaffolding  and  refuse  of  the 
absolute  philosophy.  At  the  same  time,  the  more  radical 
socialists,  as  led  by  Arnold  Ruge  and  Schweizer,  have  been 


yS  The   Confiict  in  Sociology.  [part  i. 

boldly  assailing  all  fixed  institutions,  and  maintaining  that 
Christianity  itself  is  opposed  to  the  spirit  of  the  age,  that  the- 
ologians are  a  vanishing  race,  the  Church  doomed  to  become 
extinct,  and  the  State  of  the  future  to  do  without  a  religion ; 
while  the  recent  pessimists,  Hartmann  and  Bahnsen,  are  ar- 
guing against  all  divine  purpose  in  history  as  well  as  nature, 
and  exhibiting  humanity  as  but  the  crowning  abortion  of  the 
world. 

And  at  length  the  American  infidel  assault,  still  more 
practical  in  its  aim,  has  been  seeking  to  undermine  the  very 
foundations  of  social  order;  not  merely  by  excluding  the 
Church  from  the  State,  and  Christianity  from  politics,  but  by 
the  new  socialistic  views  of  the  Owens,  th  i  emigrant  iollowers 
of  Proudhon,  and  other  European  refugees,  who  would  abolish 
both  church  and  state,  property  and  family,  and  all  divine 
institutions,  in  order  to  reconstruct  society  upon  wholy  irre- 
ligious principles. 

But  from  the  revealed  side  of  the  science  have  followed  as 
frequent  recoils  against  the  rational  theory  of  the  State,  or 
temporal  organization  of  society.  Not  only  were  the  doc- 
trines of  political  reformers  concerning  civil  liberty,  from  Ar- 
nold of  Brescia  to  Cromwell,  stigmatized  as  impious  and  re- 
bellious; not  only  were  the  teachings  of  political  economists 
respecting  interest  and  capital,  from  Montesquieu  to  Bentham, 
rejected  as  contrary  to  the  Scriptural  rule  of  usury  and  the 
curse  of  labor ;  not  only  were  the  harmless  Utopias  of  social- 
ists, from  More  to  St.  Simon,  repudiated  as  caricatures  of  the 
Christian  community  of  goods ;  and  not  only  were  the  inqui- 
ries of  philosophic  historians  for  the  fixed  laws  of  human 
progress,  from  Vico  to  Draper,  denounced  as  incompatible 
with  Divine  Providence  and  sacred  history ;  but  the  alterna- 
tive systems  in  which  great  apologetic  churchmen  entrenched 
themselves,  often  proved  untenable  or  were  left  dismantled  in 
the  course  of  the  warfare.  The  Italian  defence  was  taken  on 
the  high  ground  of  a  pure  theocracy.  Cardinal  Bellarmin, 
the  great  champion  of  the  papacy,  who  is  said  to  have  held 
the  best  polemical  pen  jn  Europe,  in  his  famous  Disputations, 
described  the  Church  as  a  vast  spiritual  corporation,  endowed 
with  divine  prerogatives,  the   State  as    but  a  vassal   of  the 


CHAP.  II.]  Italy,  England,  France,  Germany.  79 

Church,  and  the  head  of  the  Church  as  the  vicar  of  Christ 
upon  earth,  entitled  to  a  universal  monarchy,  both  spiritual 
and  temporal,  over  all  earthly  kingdoms  and  nations.  And 
consistent  to  this  hour,  the  Roman  Church  still  stands  pro- 
testing against  all  surrounding  civilization  as  heretical  and 
impious,  though  her  infallible  Pope  is  little  more  than  a  state- 
prisoner  in  the  Vatican.  The  French  defence  was  taken  on 
the  similar  ground  of  a  theocratic  monarchy.  Bossuet,  the 
shield  of  the  Galilean  Liberties,  not  only  maintained  the 
divine  right  of  kings  as  well  as  popes,  with  scriptural  argu- 
ments, but  in  his  celebrated  Discourse  on  Universal  History, 
exhibited  to  the  Dauphin  of  France  all  ancient  civilizations 
as  successively  made  tributary  to  the  Catholic  religion  by  a 
Providence  which  marched  with  strides  of  fate,  through  falling 
empires,  over  the  prostrate  wills  of  men.  And  other  apolo- 
gists of  the  reactionary  school,  such  as  Chateaubriand,  De 
Bonald  and  De  Maistre,  have  continued  to  present  the  same 
polity  as  the  only  bulwark  against  the  evils  of  modern  culture, 
as  they  are  expressed  in  the  French  revolution. 

The  English  defence  was  taken  on  the  grounds  of  episcopacy, 
presbytery  and  Congregationalism.  Archbishop  Laud,  the 
stern  propagandist  of  prelacy,  who  blended  the  divine  right  of 
bishops  with  that  of  kings,  would  have  reduced  the  State  to  a 
mere  supple  instrument  of  the  Church  ;  and  from  the  secret 
star-chamber  in  which  he  ruled  embarked  in  that  ecclesiologi- 
cal  experiment  upon  Scottish  societ}%  which  was  to  yield  the 
model  of  a  theocratic  episcopacy.  Alexander  Henderson,  the 
author  of  the  Solemn  League  and  Covenant,,  led  his  country- 
men into  that  still  wilder  crusade  by  which  king,  lords  and 
commons  were  to  be  compacted  in  uniformity  of  doctrine  and 
worship  under  the  divine  right  of  presbytery.  Sir  Henry 
Vane,  returning  from  the  colony  of  Massachusetts  to  the  com- 
monwealth of  England,  then  published  his  "  Face  of  the 
Times,"  in  which  he  traced  the  conflict  between  the  seed  of 
the  serpent  and  the  seed  of  the  woman,  through  the  rise  and 
fall  of  four  great  monarchies,  to  an  approaching  Fifth  Mon- 
archy, to  be  established  by  the  second  coming  of  King  Jesus, 
with  a  community  of  goods  and  a  reign  of  saints.  And  since 
then,  as  counterparts  of  Gibbon  and   Hume,  we  have  had  a 


8o  The  Conflict  in  Sociology.  [part  i. 

line  of  apologetic  historians,  from  the  learned  Prideaux,  who 
strove  to  exhibit  all  Gentile  civilization  as  but  a  course  of  vin- 
dictive Providence  on  behalf  of  Christianity,  to  the  recent  Theo- 
cratic History  of  Schomberg,  who  has  looked  for  similar  di- 
vine interpositions  in  the  annals  of  English  episcopacy ;  while 
millenarians,  like  Gumming,  are  interpreting  current  political 
events  as  signs  of  a  Messianic  kingdom  about  to  befall,  with  a 
universal  social  catastrophe. 

The  German  defence  has  been  taken  where  the  attack 
could  alone  be  repelled,  on  the  heights  of  speculative  history. 
In  that  lofty  fortress  of  the  faith,  chief  among  other  apolo- 
gists stood  Neander  and  Ebrard,  with  their  biographies  of 
Christ,  and  Dorner  and  Meyer,  with  their  histories  of  doc- 
trine, defending  against  Strauss  and  Baur  the  supernatural 
origin  and  development  of  Christianity  in  its  distinction  from 
the  accompanying  civilization,  like  a  beleaguered  garrison 
beset  by  treason  within  and  foes  without,  while  their  allies 
at  a  distance  were  but  mocking  at  the  battle  as  a  false  alarm, 
until  the  same  undermining  hosts  began  to  spring  up  beneath 
their  own  feet.  At  the  same  time,  in  the  region  of  ecclesias- 
tical history  and  speculation,  the  Catholic  Leo  has  been  pro- 
jecting the  mediaeval  theocracy  as  the  Church  of  the  future, 
while  the  Protestant  Rothe  would  realize  the  primitive  polity 
in  some  ideal  Christian  republic. 

And  now,  in  contrast  with  these  old-world  movements,  as 
if  to  match  the  most  extravagant  socialism  on  the  infidel  side, 
we  find  in  American  society  the  wildest  experiments  in  Chris- 
tian polity;  not  merely  the  rank  reproduction  of  all  European 
churches  and  sects  in  a  fresh  struggle  for  the  mastery,  but  new 
monster  growths  of  our  own  soil,  such  as  the  hybrid  church- 
state  of  Mormon,  and  the  theocratic  dreams  of  Millenarians, 
ever  and  anon  predicting  some  miraculous  re-organization  of 
the  world's  political  system  by  the  return  and  reign  of  Christ. 

The  conflict  in  sociology,  owing  to  the  new  and  confused 
state  of  the  science,  is  less  like  a  battle  than  a  vast  ambuscade, 
where  neither  infidels  nor  apologists  as  yet  could  meet  and 
range  themselves  under  the  banners  of  science  and  religion. 


CHAP.  II.]  Italy,  England,  France,  Germany.  8i 

The  Conflict  ix  Theology.      L 

From  the  rational  side  of  theology,  also,  there  have  been 
perpetual  attacks  upon  all  revealed  religion.  With  the  rise 
of  natural  theology  in  the  physical  and  mental  sciences,  and 
the  growth  of  the  comparative  study  of  religions,  have  come 
successive  infidel  efforts  to  discredit  or  disparage  the  peculiar 
evidences,  doctrines  and  duties  of  Christianity.  The  first 
form  of  the  attack  was  that  of  Italian  naturalism.  At  the 
dawn  of  the  movement,  the  great  poets,  Dante,  Petrarch  and 
Boccaccio,  more  or  less  consciously,  had  already  leavened 
Christian  literature  with  pagan  elements.  Pomponatius,  with 
disguised  unbelief,  as  the  chief  of  the  school,  in  a  treatise  on 
the  causes  of  natural  phenomena,  held  with  Aristotle,  that 
God,  the  prime  mover,  is  wholly  abstracted  from  the  world  in 
eternal  self-contemplation,  while  the  mundane  intelligence 
itself  and  all  other  spirits  are  but  physical  and  mortal.  Simon 
Porta,  an  advanced  disciple  of  the  same  school,  reduced  its 
doctrines  to  system  in  his  natural  philosophy.  Bruno,  com- 
bining the  atomism  of  Lucretius  with  the  new,  more  scientific 
conceptions  of  nature,  represented  the  universe  as  an  infinite 
and  eternal  substance,  which  he  called  God,  undergoing  per- 
petual metamorphoses  in  all  worlds,  through  all  stages,  from 
lifeless  atoms  to  living  orbs.  And  Julius  Vanini,  a  still  more 
reckless  thinker,  by  the  publication  of  a  work  entitled  "  Na- 
ture, the  Queen  and  Goddess  of  Mortals,"  seems  to  have  torn 
the  mask  from  the  prevalent  naturalism,  and  revealed  it  as 
pantheism  or  atheism. 

The  next  form  of  the  attack  which  followed  was  that  of 
English  deism.  Herbert  of  Cherbury,  as  the  forerunner  of 
the  school,  by  distinguishing  truth  from  revelation,  led  the 
way,  with  his  project  of  a  religion  of  all  nations,  comprising 
only  as  much  of  Christianity  as  it  has  in  common  with  natural 
theism.  Hobbes,  the  chief  founder  of  the  school,  in  his  Le- 
viathan, admitted  the  probable  existence  of  God,  but  only  as 
an  incomprehensible  material  cause  of  the  world,  whose  blind 
omnipotence  was  lodged  in  the  king  as  head  of  a  body  politic, 
including  even  the  state-religion  under  the  royal  prerogative. 
Bolingbroke,  the  courtier  of  the  school,  advanced  a  somewhat 


82  The  Conflict  in  Theology.  [part  i. 

more  refined  conception  of  God  as  a  physical  Creator  of  the 
world,  displaying  in  his  works  the  mere  natural  attributes  of 
power  and  wisdom;  but  denied  that  any  moral  attributes 
could  be  discerned  either  in  nature  or  in  Providence,  both  of 
which  often  appear  to  contradict  true  goodness  and  justice  by 
instances  of  malevolent  contrivance  and  unpunished  vice. 
Alexander  Pope,  as  the  poet  of  the  school,  depicted  in  lines 
which  have  the  fascination  of  horror,  a  stoical  Deity, 

''  Who  sees  with  equal  eye  as  Lord  of  all, 
A  hero  perish  or  a  sparrow  fall, 
Atoms  or  systems  into  ruin  hurl'd, 
Or  now  a  bubble  burst,  or  now  a  world." 

Thomas  Chubb,  a  literary  tallow-chandler,  with  much  natural 
shrewdness,  popularized  the  genteel  deism  by  a  series  of 
pamphlets,  in  which,  after  the  manner  of  Paine,  he  attacked 
the  Scriptural  representations  of  Providence  as  wholly  incon- 
sistent with  natural  ethics.  And  at  length  David  Hume,  in 
his  Dialogues  on  Natural  Religion,  accumulated  all  the  scep- 
tical objections  that  had  ever  been  raised  against  the  existence 
of  a  God ;  denied  that  we  can  even  conceive  such  a  being,  or, 
indeed,  any  adequate  cause  of  the  world  ;  and  declared  that  the 
best  conception  we  can  form  of  the  universe  is  that  of  a  huge, 
growing  plant,  rather  than  a  work  of  intelligent  design. 

The  next  phase  of  the  attack  was  that  of  French  atheism. 
Montaigne  and  Le  Vayer  had  already  raised  the  spirit  of 
scepticism.  Voltaire,  the  wit  and  idol  of  the  school,  though 
a  professed  deist,  in  his  sketch  of  the  Ignorant  Philosopher, 
threw  doubts  upon  the  whole  argument  for  a  God,  admitting 
it  only  as  good  for  police ;  scoffed  at  Providence  under  the 
mock  titles  of  Chance  and  Destiny;  and  wrote  one  of  his  ro- 
mances, entitled  "  Candide,"  as  a  satire  upon  the  doctrine  of 
the  religious  trials  of  life.  Diderot,  the  popular  leader  of  the 
school,  a  sophist  and  a  profligate,  who  fled  from  Paris  to  the 
protection  of  Catherine  of  Russia,  in  his  Philosophical  Frag- 
ments, openly  assailed  the  belief  in  a  just  God  as  an  unneces- 
sary and  troublesome  tenet,  interfering  with  the  pleasures  of 
life.  Julius  la  Mettrie,  court  philosopher  to  Frederick  the 
Great,  promulged,  in  his  treatise  on  the  Happy  Life,  the  im- 


CHAP.  II.]         Italy,  England,  France,  Germany.  83 

pious  creed  that  men  would  never  be  happy  until  they  became 
atheistic  and  abandoned  the  dictates  of  religion  for  the  appe- 
tites of  nature.  The  authors  of  the  "System  of  Nature" 
openly  avowed  the  atheism  of  the  school ;  maintained  that 
though  a  God  might  be  respected,  yet  the  world  alone  was  to 
be  loved ;  and  argued  that  more  education  and  courage  were 
all  that  was  needed  to  make  this  creed  universal.  Anacharsis 
Clootz  proclaimed,  in  the  Revolutionary  Convention,  that 
there  was  no  other  God  but  Nature,  and  no  other  sovereign 
than  the  divine  people.  And  at  length,  after  this  atheism  had 
been  repeated  with  endless  variations,  Auguste  Comte  an- 
nounced a  new  so-called  religion,  having  man  himself  for  its 
only  God,  and  consisting  essentially  in  the  systematic  wor- 
ship of  humanity. 

The  final  form  of  attack  in  our  day  has  been  that  of  Ger- 
man pantheism.  Lessing  and  Jacobi  had  already  revived  and 
imported  the  speculations  of  Spinoza  upon  absolute  Deity, 
and  the  extreme  disciples  of  Schelling  and  Hegel,  in  due  time, 
were  couching  them  under  Scripture  phrases  in  place  of  the 
Christian  theism.  Bernard  Blasche,  of  the  former  school, 
sought  to  resolve  man  into  a  mere  phenomenon  or  transient 
image  of  God,  and  to  make  the  evil  as  divine  as  the  good  in 
the  government  of  the  world.  Carl  Michelet,  as  a  strict  He- 
gelian, with  his  doctrine  of  absolute  personality,  would  virtu- 
ally have  merged  God  in  the  Avorld  as  having  no  separate  in- 
dependent existence  and  coming  to  consciousness  only  in 
man,  the  true  incarnate  Christ.  Strauss,  at  the  extreme  left 
of  Hegel,  passed  into  still  grosser  pantheism,  in  his  "Old  and 
New  Faith,"  by  substituting  for  the  Christian  God,  as  his  only 
object  of  worship,  a  law-governed  cosmos,  or  enormous  ma- 
chine of  a  universe,  amid  whose  jagged  wheels  and  ponderous 
hammers  helpless  man  may  at  any  moment  be  seized  and 
crushed  to  powder.  Feuerbach,  from  the  same  position, 
reached  a  sort  of  conscious  anthropomorphism,  maintaining, 
in  his  "  Essence  of  Christianity,"  that  man,  as  the  final  pro- 
duct of  the  whole  logical  development  of  nature,  can  find  no 
superior  being ;  that  the  imagined  deity  is  only  an  illusory 
personification  of  his  own  human  attributes ;  in  a  word,  that 
he  has  but  created  a  god  after  his  own  image.     Arthur  Schop- 


84  Tlie  Confiict  in  Theology.  [part  i. 

enhauer,  with  still  more  daring  impiety,  in  his  work  entitled 
"The  World  as  Will  and  Notion,"  boasted  that  he  had  de- 
stroyed the  last  vestige  of  theism,  by  showing  that  both  the 
cosmos  and  its  man-made  deity  are  alike  ideal  and  illu- 
sory, the  mere  phantasm  of  his  brain,  an  abortive  human  crea- 
tion, which  by  one  stroke  of  the  will  would  collapse  into  blind 
force  and  nothingness.  And  Ernst  von  Hartmann,  a  disciple 
of  both  Hegel  and  Schopenhauer,  as  if  to  couple  absurdity  with 
impiety,  believes  himself  to  have  demonstrated  atheism  or 
pantheism  by  uniting  unconscious  force  and  reason  through- 
out nature  and  history,  while  in  his  recent  tractate  on  the 
"Decomposition  of  Christianity"  he  projects  a  sort  of  philo- 
sophical Buddhism  as  the  universal  religion  of  the  future. 
At  the  same  time,  these  different  forms  of  European  unbelief 
have  now  and  then  found  American  representatives,  from 
Paine  to  Theodore  Parker,  together  with  other  indigenous 
allies,  such  as  the  Free  Religionists  of  Boston,  who  would 
demolish  all  existing  creeds  in  order  to  rebuild  some  new  re- 
ligion on  antichristian  principles. 

From  the  revealed  side  of  the  science,  however,  there  have 
ensued  occasional  recoils  against  all  rational  religion.  If  it 
can  be  said  that  the  disciples  of  natural  theology  and  the  fol- 
lowers of  heathen  religions  have  always  been  treated  with  due 
tolerance  and  pity,  or  that  their  own  irreverence  and  folly 
have  not  often  justified  a  harsh  usage,  yet  it  must  also  be 
granted  that  in  the  criticism  of  their  systems  many  valuable 
grains  of  truth  have  been  thrown  away  with  the  chaff  of  error, 
and  that  not  seldom  have  the  resorts  of  the  defenders  of  Chris- 
tian theology  been  found  weak  or  absurd.  Some  of  the 
Italian  apologists  were  thus  betrayed  into  an  extravagant 
supernaturalism.  Ficinus  and  the  two  Picos,  in  opposing 
with  Platonic  arguments  the  Aristotelian  doctrine  of  a  mun- 
dane soul,  maintained  the  direct  intervention  in  the  natural 
world  not  only  of  God  but  of  spirits  and  angels,  and  thus 
opened  the  way  for  those  superstitions  of  sacred  magic  and 
theosophy  which  soon  overspread  Europe. 

Some  of  the  English  apologists,  also,  venturing  upon  the 
grounds  of  deism,  were  caught  in  serious  errors.  Cud- 
worth  whose  "Intellectual  System  of  the  Universe  "  remains  a 


CHAP.  II.]         Italy,  England,  France,  Gcrmajiy.  85 

prodigy  of  classical  erudition  and  metaphysical  acuteness,  by 
reviving  the  ancient  doctrine  of  a  plastic  nature  or  organizing 
soul  distinct  from  God,  avoided  the  fatalism  of  Hobbes  only 
to  become  entangled  in  the  scepticism  of  Bayle,  who  adroitly 
charged  him  with  the  very  atheism  he  aimed  to  refute. 
Clarke,  in  his  celebrated  "  Demonstration  of  the  Being  and 
Attributes  of  God,"  professed  to  frame  a  strictly  logical  con- 
ception of  absolute  deity,  as  a  necessary  substratum  of  infi- 
nite space  and  time,  but  by  making  human  thought  the 
measure  of  the  divine  nature,  as  well  as  by  deriving  from  the 
world  itself  his  proof  of  the  divine  character,  he  exposed 
himself  to  the  sophistry  of  Bolingbroke,  as  expressed  in  the 
sarcasm  of  Pope  against  those 

"  Who  nobly  take  the  high  priori  road 
And  reason  downwards  till  they  doubt  of  God." 

A  number  of  apologists,  such  as  Leland,  seem  to  have  con- 
sciously labored  under  social  and  literary  disadvantages  in 
criticising  titled  authors,  like  the  Earl  of  Shaftesbury  and 
Viscount  Bolingbroke.  Bishop  Warburton's  paradoxical  de- 
fense of  the  Divine  Legation  of  Moses  on  the  ground  that 
unlike  heathen  legislators  he  maintained  a  civil  polity  with- 
out the  motives  of  future  rewards  and  punishments,  must 
have  seemed  to  his  astute  opponents  like  the  exploit  of  the 
dog  in  the  fable,  who  sacrificed  the  substance  for  the  shadow. 
And  Bishop  Berkley,  though  his  Principles  of  Human  Know- 
ledge are  oftener  ridiculed  than  refuted,  can  scarcely  be  said 
to  have  established  Christian  theism  by  assuming  it  as  the 
basis  of  a  metaphysical  theory  of  the  world,  which  Hume  de- 
clared to  have  afforded  rhore  sceptical  lessons  than  all  ancient 
and  modern  systems  combined. 

Some  of  the  French  apologists,  too,  in  their  recoil  from 
atheism  ran  into  errors  not  less  serious.  Pascal,  though 
he  projected  in  his  "  Thoughts  on  Religion "  a  magnifi- 
cent Christian  apology,  which  is  still  admired  as  the  torso  of 
a  master,  might  only  have  supported  the  orthodoxy  of  Au- 
gustine with  the  scepticism  of  Montaigne.  Father  Male- 
branche,  whose  theory  of  the  vision  of  all  things  in  God  was 
tersely  endorsed  by  Bossuet,  pnlchra,  nova,  falsa,   seems  to 


86  The  Conflict  in   Theology.  [part  i. 

have  pursued  his  antagonist,  Spinoza,  along  the  dizzy  verge  of 
pantheism,  until  he  became  himself  all  but  fascinated  by  the 
abyss  from  which  he  recoiled.  And  Fenelon,  whilst  discours- 
ing with  saintly  eloquence  upon  a  Deity  conceived  as  the  Being 
of  all  beings,  the  most  Essential  of  all  essences,  may  have  only 
been  neglecting  plainer  physical  proofs  which  were  destined  to 
pass  through  the  hands  of  Maupertuis,  Bonnet,  and  Rousseau, 
until  at  length  the  Cardinal  Polignac  should  find  himself  vainly 
confronting  the  "  System  of  Nature,"  with  his  "Anti-Lucretius." 

But  some  of  the  German  apologists  have  recently  been 
landed  in  still  more  deceptive  errors.  Since  the,  time  when 
Kant  by  his  subtle  criticism  had  undermined  the  theistic  ar- 
guments of  Leibnitz,  Wolf,  and  their  disciples,  a  host  of 
defensive  divines  have  been  rushing  into  the  breach  armed 
with  old  and  new  weapons.  The  veteran  theologians,  Storr 
and  Flatt,  Knapp,  Hengstenberg,  and  Tholuck,  have  simply 
striven  to  repel  the  new  pantheism  with  the  spontaneous  evi- 
dence of  reason,  of  conscience,  and  of  Scripture.  The  Catholic 
Hettinger,  in  opposition  to  its  chief  authorities,  has  collated 
the  testimonies  of  schoolmen,  and  doctors,  and  the  decrees 
of  councils.  The  Hegelian  dogmatists,  Marheineke,  Daub, 
and  Goschel,  have  been  transfusing  divine  realities  into  its 
godless  abstractions,  and  even  looking  for  the  Christian  trinity 
in  its  trilogy  of  the  universal  logic.  Other  speculative  divines 
have  recoiled  from  it  towards  the  crude  Cartesian  dualism,  or 
the  pre-established  harmony  of  Leibnitz.  At  the  same  time, 
apologetic  students  of  Comparative  Theology,  like  the  Pla- 
tonizing  fathers,  are  connecting  the  Christian  religion  as  a 
supernatural  and  special  revelation  with  one  that  is  natural 
and  universal  in  all  other  religions.  And  at  length,  as  a  fit 
counterpart  for  the  wildest  irreligion  of  infidel  fancy,  we 
have  in  our  American  medley  of  creeds,  besides  the  new 
scriptures  and  apostles  of  Swedenborg  and  Irving,  the  modern 
Christianism  of  Campbell,  and  Judaism  of  Mormon. 

In  the  great  conflict  which  we  have  been  sketching.  The- 
ology as  the  science  of  religion  stands  among  the  other 
sciences,  like  a  citadel  in  the  midst  of  concentric  bulwarks, 
beleagured  from  outpost  to  battlement,  but  ever  lifting  a  divine 
signal  toward  heaven. 


CHAP.  II.]  !t(^lv,  England,  France,  Germany.  "^y 

At  this  point  it  would  be  in  order  to  trace  the  same  war- 
fare in  metaphysical  science  or  rational  cosmology,  as  waged 
by  infidel  pessimists  from  Voltaire  to  Schopenhauer  and  apo- 
logetic optimists  from  Leibnitz  to  Weygoldt ;  but  the  notice 
of  these  and  other  omitted  opinions  and  authors  must  be  re- 
served for  the  followino;  lectures. 


The  Conflict  in  Philosophy. 

Ascending  at  length  into  the  high  region  of  philosophy, 
the  science  of  the  sciences,  we  shall  there  find  the  conflict  on 
the  largest  scale  between  the  two  great  factions  of  infidel 
sceptics  and  apologetic  mystics,  who  have  contended,  during 
successive  centuries,  in  different  countries,  concerning  the 
limits  or  prerogatives  of  reason  and  revelation,  like  rival  em- 
perors whose  numerous  skirmishes  and  battles  at  last  merge 
in  a  general  encounter  for  the  prize  of  universal  dominion. 

At  the  rationalistic  extreme  of  philosophy  there  has  been  a 
growing  effort  to  supplant  divine  revelation  by  means  of  hu- 
man reason.  In  the  sixteenth  century  this  effort  was  dis- 
guised and  restricted.  Italy,  as  we  have  seen,  had  the  school 
of  Pomponatius,  whose  treatise  on  Fate  and  Free  Will  was 
the  first  of  the  mock  compromises  between  truths  of  reason 
and  truths  of  revelation.  France  had  but  an  occasional  scep- 
tic, such  as  Pierre  Charron,  a  wayward  disciple  of  Montaigne, 
who  argued,  in  his  work  on  "Wisdom,"  that  revelation  is 
metaphysically  impossible,  and  reason,  defective  though  it  be, 
the  only  guide  of  life.  And  the  rest  of  Europe  was  scarce 
disturbed  with  a  doubt.  In  the  seventeenth  century  the  scene 
rather  than  the  spirit  of  the  movement  was  changed.  Italy, 
for  the  time,  disappeared  from  the  philosophical  arena.  France 
was  represented  by  Le  Vayer,  whose  "  Dialogues  "  united  the 
scepticism  of  Charron  with  the  epicurism  of  Gassendi,  in  a 
covert  attack  upon  all  revealed  religion.  And  England  was 
led  into  the  coming  conflict  by  Hobbes,  who  treated  revela- 
tion as  a  mere  historical  tradition,  to  be  woven  into  his  sys- 
tem of  political  idolatry.  In  the  eighteenth  centuiy  the 
movement  became  more  open  and  general.  England  now 
appeared  in  the  front,  under  such  leaders  as  Anthony  Collins, 


88  Tlic  Conflict  in  Phil o sop] ly.  [part  i. 

whose  "  Essay  on  Free  Thinking  "  first  asserted  the  indepen- 
dence of  reason,  whilst  his  "  Grounds  of  the  Christian  Reh- 
gion "  undermined  the  prophetical  evidence  of  revelation ; 
Woolston,  whose  "  Discourses  "  assailed  the  miraculous  evi- 
dence as  of  a  purely  mythical  nature ;  and  Morgan,  whose 
"Moral  Philosopher"  made  reason  the  sole  judge  of  the  con- 
tents as  well  as  evidences  of  revelation,  rejecting  Christianity 
as  mere  sublimated  Judaism.  France  soon  followed  with  such 
master  spirits  as  Voltaire  and  Rousseau  in  the  world  of  let- 
ters, D'Alembert  and  Diderot  in  the  world  of  science,  and 
D'Holbach  and  Helvetius  in  the  world  of  fashion,  all  com- 
bining to  array  reason  against  revelation,  with  a  versatile 
genius  as  dazzling  as  the  hues  of  the  serpent  in  paradise. 
Germany,  too,  at  the  infidel  court  of  Frederick  and  in  the 
"  Wolfenbiittel  Fragments"  of  Reimarus,  began  to  muster  for 
the  formidable  critical  attack  of  the  next  century.  And  Eu- 
rope generally  was  asserting  the  independence  of  reason 
against  revelation  ;  whilst  America  first  emerged  to  view  in 
the  "Age  of  Reason,"  by  the  notorious  Tom  Paine.  And 
now,  in  this  nineteenth  century,  we  behold  the  movement 
everywhere  becoming  intense  and  systematic.  France  has 
condensed  all  her  materialistic  infidelity  in  Auguste  Comte, 
whose  "  Positive  Philosophy"  aims  to  substitute  physical  sci- 
ence by  the  very  law  of  its  growth,  in  place  of  revelation. 
Germany  has  massed  all  her  erudite,  metaphysical  infidelity, 
in  David  Strauss,  whose  "  Life  of  Christ "  is  an  astute  at- 
tempt to  resolve  the  gospels  into  mere  ancient  myths  and 
philosophic  fables,  in  the  light  of  modern  thought  and  re- 
search. England  has  reproduced  all  her  varied  practical  infi- 
delity in  Francis  Newman,  whose  "Phases  of  Faith"  exhibit 
the  transition  of  Christianity,  from  Calvinism  to  Deism,  under 
a  supposed  law  of  progress,  toward  a  perfect  religion.  And 
America  would  seem  to  have  combined  English,  French  and 
German  infidelity  in  Theodore  Parker,  whose  "  Discourses  of 
Religion  "  represent  the  Christian  revelation  as  only  the  last 
of  the  world's  mythologies,  to  be  surmounted  by  the  one  ab- 
solute faith  of  reason. 

At  the  mystical  extreme   of  philosophy  there  has  been  a 
corresponding  effort  meanwhile  to  supj^lant  human  reason  by 


CHAP.  II.]          Italy,  England,  France,  Germany.  8g 

means  of  divine  revelation.  In  the  sixteenth  century  this 
effort  was  complete  and  successful.  Italy,  as  we  have  seen, 
had  the  Platonic  school  of  the  two  Picos,  whose  works  on  the 
"Hexaplus"  or  six  days'  creation,  and  the  "Study  of  Divine 
and  Human  Wisdom,"  virtually  superseded  reason,  by  deriving 
from  revelation  all  science,  both  physical  and  metaphysical, 
heathen  and  Christian.  Germany  had  the  affiliated  schools 
of  Reuchlin,  whose  "Wonderful  Word"  offered  the  Holy 
Scriptures  as  the  only  cure  of  monkish  ignorance,  and  the  key 
to  all  knowledge,  divine  and  human ;  Agrippa,  whose  "  Oc- 
cult Philosophy"  proposed  divine  revelation  as  the  sole 
remedy  for  the  uncertainty  and  vanity  of  human  science ; 
and  Valentine  Weigel,  whose  "  Golden  Touchstone,  or  Way 
to  learn  Infallibly  All  Things,"  afterward  gave  rise  to  the  ex- 
travagant pretensions  of  the  Rosicrucians,  or  secret  fraternity 
of  the  Rosy  Cross.  England,  at  the  same  time,  had  the  fore- 
runner of  a  like  movement  in  Robert  Fludd,  whose  "  Mosaic 
Philosophy"  professed  to  found  a  purely  Christian  science  of 
creation  on  the  book  of  Genesis.  And  Europe  at  large  was 
only  beginning  to  waken  from  the  trance  of  scholastic  mysti- 
cism. In  the  seventeenth  century,  with  the  increase  of  free 
thought,  the  effort  grew  more  conscious  and  avowed.  Italy 
was  then  under  the  heel  of  the  Roman  hierarchy,  claiming  to 
suppress  reason  by  an  infallible  revelation,  as  expressed  in  the 
decrees  of  the  Council  of  Trent.  Germany  still  retained  her 
school  of  mystic  naturalists  and  divines,  such  as  the  Von  Hel- 
monts,  father  and  son,  whose  "Holy  Art"  was  designed  to 
substitute  revelation  and  inspiration  for  reason  and  observa- 
tion in  all  fields  of  research  ;  Jacob  Bcehme,  the  Teutonic 
Philosopher,  who  sought,  by  his  "  Aurora,"  to  shed  the  light 
of  Scripture  through  every  province  of  nature ;  and  John 
Comenius,  who  professed  to  derive  from  the  Mosaic  writings 
a  "Synopsis  of  Physics,  reformed  according  to  Divine  Light." 
France  had  a  convert  to  the  same  school,  in  Pierre  Poiret,  who 
assailed  Descartes  and  Locke  as  mere  rationalists;  distin- 
guishing, in  his  "Three  Kinds  of  Learning,"  all  human  science 
from  the  Divine  wisdom,  as  in  its  very  nature  false  or  super- 
ficial. Sweden,  Norway  and  Switzerland  had  like  represen- 
tatives   in    such    biblical    philosophers    as    Gasman,    whose 


90  Tlic  Conflict  in  Philosophy.  [part    i. 

"  Modest  Assertion  of  True  and  Christian  Philosophy "  em- 
braced a  whole  encyclopaedia  of  science,  derived  exclusively 
from  the  Scriptures ;  Aslach,  who  drew  from  the  same  source, 
"A  System  of  Christian  Ethics  and  Physics";  and  Dana^us 
of  Geneva-,  who  wrote  a  similar  treatise  on  "Christian"  Phy- 
sics." England,  at  the  same  time,  rallied  against  her  deistical 
rationalists,  the  Cambridge  school  of  Platonic  divines,  such  as 
Theophilus  Gale,  the  learned  Presbyterian  non-conformist, 
whose  "Court  of  the  Gentiles"  was  designed  to  include  all 
human  philosophy  within  the  pale  of  divine  revelation,  by 
heathen  tradition  from  the  Holy  Scriptures  and  the  Jewish 
Church ;  Henry  More,  the  ascetic  mystic,  of  whom  we  have 
before  spoken,  whose  "  Cabalistic  Conjectures  "  proceeded  upon 
the  same  theory,  only  to  a  greater  extreme ;  and  the  natural- 
ists, Hutchinson,  Burnet  and  Whiston,  who  endeavored  to  ex- 
tract whole  systems  of  physical  science  from  the  books  of 
Moses.  And  Europe  generally  was  marshalled  for  the  great 
impending  conflict.  In  the  eighteenth  century,  with  a  change 
of  ground  and  weapons,  the  effort  became  defensive  and  des- 
perate. Italy  still  claimed  the  whole  province  of  philosophy 
for  the  chair  of  St.  Peter.  England,  forced  to  concede  to 
reason  her  rights  as  critic  of  the  evidences  of  revelation,  pro- 
duced only  such  judicious  apologies  as  those  of  Butler,  War- 
burton  and  Paley.  France,  overwhelmed  with  revolutionary 
infidelity,  presented  no  longer  any  front  of  aggressiv^e  Chris- 
tianity. Germany  was  idly  striving  to  make  terms  with  the 
rationalism  which  spread  stealthily  through  her  seats  of  cul- 
ture. And  all  Christendom  was  a  theatre  of  conflicting 
opinions.  And  now,  in  this  nineteenth  century,  the  effort 
would  seem  to  have  wholly  ceased  or  become  purely  apolo- 
getic. .  Protestantism,  rallying  round  an  infallible  Bible,  has 
left  the  open  field  to  reason,  whilst  Catholicism  alone  pretends 
to  repress  and  confine  it  through  her  recent  syllabus  of  an  in- 
fallible Pope. 

And  thus  philosophy,  in  such  extreme  hands,  has  threat- 
ened, by  turns,  to  exterminate  reason  through  a  tyrannical 
abuse  of  revelation,  or  to  supersede  revelation  through  an 
impious  usurpation  of  reason. 


CHAP.  II.]         Italy,  Englmid,  France,  Germany.  9 1 

The  Results  in  Civilization. 

Descending  now  to  the  plane  of  common  life,  where  theo- 
ries are  reduced  to  practice  and  ideas  issue  in  events,  we  shall 
there  behold  the  great  speculative  conflict  attended  with  cor- 
responding convulsions  and  disasters,  in  different  countries, 
through  successive  generations,  like  the  havoc  and  misery 
which  mark  the  track  of  contending  armies. 

At  the  one  extreme,  by  an  infidel  philosophy,  civilization 
has  repeatedly  been  forced  into  collision  with  Christianity. 
Italian  infidelity  in  the  sixteenth  century,  basking  at  the  very 
court  of  the  Holy  Father,  fostered  immorality,  tyranny,  and 
impiety  in  the  clergy,  whilst  it  practised  astrology,  magic,  and 
quackery  upon  the  people,  until  public  indignation  forced  it  to 
assume  the  garb  of  virtue.  English  infidelity  in  the  seven- 
teenth century,  flushed  with  its  victory  over  puritanism  at  the 
court  of  Charles  the  Second,  made  religion  the  jest  of  the 
aristocracy,  leavened  the  Church  with  hypocrisy,  and,  though 
repudiated  by  the  nation,  corrupted,  through  its  literature, 
the  faith  of  other  lands  for  generations.  French  infidelity  in 
the  eighteenth  century,  breaking  forth  in  the  revolutionary 
convention,  decreed  the  abolition  of  worship  and  the  priest- 
hood, converted  the  churches  into  temples  of  reason,  inscribed 
over  the  cemeteries,  "  Death  is  an  eternal  sleep,"  and  reigned 
amid  orgies  of  blood  and  terror  which  sent  a  shudder  through- 
out Christendom.  German  infidelity  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, bursting  through  the,  jargon  of  philosophy,  proclaimed 
undisguisedly  the  reign  of  lust,  the  worship  of  self,  the  down- 
fall of  the  Church,  and  at  length,  from  the  National  Assembly 
itself,  threatened  an  anarchy  which  the  moral  earnestness  of 
the  people  alone  averted.  And  American  infidelity  in  our 
own  day,  by  its  bold  attacks  upon  Christian  institutions  in  the 
form  of  free  love,  necromancy  and  secularism,  is  already,  ever 
and  anon,  menacing  the  social  order. 

At  the  other  extreme,  however,  by  a  fanatical  faith  Chris- 
tianity has  repeatedly  been  forced  into  collision  with  civiliza- 
tion. It  was  Italian  fanaticism  which,  from  the  tribunal  of  the 
Inquisition,  consigned  the  first  martyrs  of  philosophy  to  the 
dungeon  and  the  flames,  inscribed  each  new  discovery  of  sci- 


92  General  Results  in   Civilization.  [part  i. 

ence  in  the  index  of  heresies,  kindled  the  fagot  of  rehgious 
persecution,  and  convulsed  Europe  with  the  desolating  wars 
of  the  Reformation.  It  was  French  fanaticism  which,  by  the 
decrees  of  the  Sorbonne,  arrayed  learning  for  the  time  on  the 
side  of  superstition,  destroyed  or  expelled  the  soundest  cul- 
ture of  the  nation  by  the  massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew,  fos- 
tered hypocrisy,  corruption,  and  tyranny  in  the  court  and 
aristocracy,  and  thus,  in  the  issue,  provoked  the  horrors  of 
the  Revolution.  It  was  English  fanaticism  which,  through  the 
successive  wars  of  episcopacy,  presbytery  and  independency, 
subverted  the  entire  social  fabric  of  Great  Britain,  and  at 
length  achieved,  in  the  Act  of  Uniformity,  that  political  mas- 
sacre of  dissent,  whose  ghost  now  comes  back  in  the  shape 
of  disestablishment.  If  German  fanaticism  has  appeared  only 
in  such  exceptional  disorders  as  those  of  the  Anabaptists  and 
other  later  sectaries,  it  may  be  because  the  conservative  and 
speculative  habit  of  the  people  but  seldom  precipitates  it  into 
action.  And  what  American  fanaticism  can  accomplish  has 
already  been  shown  in  the  convulsions  connected  with  slavery, 
polygamy,  and  the  mediaeval  panics  of  the  Millerites. 

Thus  the  extremists,  on  both  sides,  reach  a  like  degree 
of  divergence  and  opposition,  and  in  their  aims  or  tenden- 
cies are  both  destructive.  Were  either  to  prevail  against  the 
other,  an  original  power  of  human  nature  would  be  annulled, 
and  a  vast  accumulation  of  human  knowledge  dispersed. 
The  real  issue  made  by  them,  however  unwittingly,  is  whether 
science  shall  extirpate  religion,  or  religion  shall  extirpate 
science ;  or,  stated  more  practically,  whether  civilization  shall 
reduce  Christianity  to  superstition,  or  Christianity  remand 
civilization  to  barbarism. 

Now,  although  such  extreme  errors  are  by  no  means  equally 
pernicious,  yet  they  plainly  both  proceed  upon  the  same  false 
view  of  the  normal  relations  of  reason  and  revelation.  There  is 
nothing  in  the  idea  of  either  to  necessitate  collision  or  con- 
flict. Viewed  in  the  abstract,  the  finite  mind  and  the  Infinite 
Mind,  the  divine  intelligence  and  the  human  intelligence,  can- 
not be  presumed  to  be  in  a  state  of  logical  opposition.  Each 
may  have  its  own  distinct  sphere,  method,  and  aim ;  and,  at 
the  same  time,  safely  concede  the  like  to  the  other.     To  put 


CHAP.  II.]  Concluding  Argument.  93 

them  at  war,  would  be  only  to  force  them  into  abnormal  ac- 
tion. It  may  be  taken  as  an  axiom,  that  it  is  at  once  contraiy 
to  reason  to  oppose  revelation,  and  contrary  to  revelation  to 
oppose  reason.  So  that,  when  any  antagonism  springs  up 
between  them,  it  is  simply  to  be  treated  as  anomalous. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  apparent  rather  than  real.  Often  it 
consists  of  mere  logomachy,  which  would  disappear  on  a 
close  comparison  of  terms  and  views.  Religious  creeds  and 
scientific  theories  come  into  conflict,  not  because  of  any  actual 
disagreement  between  the  facts  of  nature  and  the  truths  of 
Scripture,  but  solely  because  of  some  false  exegesis  on  the  one 
side,  or  some  wrong  induction  on  the  other.  All  truth  must 
be  found  consistent  with  itself,  when  freed  from  admixture  with 
error. 

In  the  second  place,  it  is  temporary  rather  than  permanent. 
The  least  developed  sciences  are  those  which  are  in  this  stage 
of  antagonism,  while  the  most  exact  and  complete  are  already 
passing  into  one  of  lasting  harmony.  As  our  science  and 
our  theology  mature,  they  will  correct  and  complement  each 
other,  until  at  length  they  shall  stand  forth  coincident.  The 
unity  of  knowledge  is  as  axiomatic  as  the  unity  of  truth. 

In  the  third  place,  it  is  in  some  of  its  effects,  salutary  rather 
than  hurtful.  By  means  of  it,  the  several  growths  of  reason 
and  revelation  in  history  have  been  disentangled,  and  left  to 
a  freer  and  more  fruitful  development.  Science  has  been 
emancipated  from  ecclesiastical  domination  and  fanatical  in- 
terference, and  religion  from  unsafe  alliances  with  bigotry 
and  superstition  ;  while  in  both  departments  new  enthusiasms 
have  been  kindled  and  a  minuter  division  of  labors  promoted. 

We  conclude,  therefore,  that  the  two  interests,  whatever  else 
they  may  be,  are  not  hostile  and  exterminant,  but  distinct  and 
separate,  limiting  each  other  with  boundaries  which  neither 
can  pass  except  at  its  own  peril.  Let  the  religionist  who  would 
invade  science  be  warned  by  that  saying  of  a  Christian  sage, 
"  If  you  will  try  to  chop  iron,  the  axe  becomes  unable  to  cut 
even  wood;"  and  let  the  scientist  who  would  invade  religion 
be  warned  by  that  heathen  fable,  wherein  "  men  and  gods  are 
represented  as  unable  to  draw  Jupiter  to  earth,  but  Jupiter 
able  to  draw  them  up  to  heaven." 


CHAPTER  III. 


MODERN  INDIFFERENTISM  BETWEEN  SCIENCE 
AND  RELIGION. 


If  a  truce  should  be  proclaimed  between  two  great  armies 
on  the  brink  of  battle,  we  can  imagine  what  a  change  would 
pass  over  the  spectacle ;  how  the  advancing  squadrons  would 
everywhere  be  recalled,  the  noise  and  dust  of  the  conflict 
cease,  and  the  long,  serried  ranks  rest  upon  their  arms,  whilst 
ambassadors  from  both  sides,  in  high  council,  were  exchanging 
hollow  forms  of  peace  amid  the  stern  realities  of  war.  It 
might  even  seem  for  a  little  space  as  if  some  terms  were  to  be 
arranged,  giving  divided  empire  to  both  sovereigns,  until  sud- 
denly the  signal  of  renewed  hostilities  would  dispel  the  dream 
and  show  it  to  have  been  but  like  the  portentous  lull  before 
a  summer's  storm. 

"And  so,"  says  the  Duke  of  Argyll,  "  we  see  the  men  of 
Theology  coming  out  to  parley  with  the  men  of  Science, — a 
white  flag  in  their  hands,  and  saying,  'If  you  will  let  us  alone, 
we  will  do  the  same  by  you.  Keep  to  your  province,  do  not 
enter  ours.  The  Reign  of  Law  which  you  proclaim  we  ad- 
mit— outside  these  walls,  but  not  within  them.  Let  there  be 
peace  between  us.'  But  this  will  never  do.  There  can  be  no 
such  treaty  dividing  the  domain  of  truth." 

We  have  termed  this  class  of  thinkers,  whether  they  are  in 
the  interest  of  religion  or  of  science,  the  Indifferentists,  be- 
cause they  would  seclude  themselves  from  each  other  in  a 
strict  indifference ;  the  one,  by  holding  to  revelation  without 
reason,  and  the  other,  by  holding  to  reason  without  revcla- 
94 


CF\p.  III.]      Religions  and  Scientific  Ifidiffomtists.  95 

tion.  They  stand  aloof  from  every  question  into  which 
Scripture  and  Science  can  enter.  In  mutual  dread  of  inva- 
sion, they  seem  to  have  agreed  upon  a  division  and  joint  oc- 
cupancy of  the  domain  of  truth,  while  as  to  any  common 
ground  between  them,  they  will  keep  up  a  kind  of  armed 
neutrality  or  truce,  until  either  shall  have  demonstrated  his 
power  to  take  and  hold  it  in  defiance  of  the  other.  In  a  word, 
they  are  the  men  who  cry,  Peace,  when  there  is  no  peace  in 
all  the  wide  field  of  philosophy. 

As  compared  with  the  party  of  Extremists  already  noticed, 
they  are  only  less  averse  to  any  proper  settlement  of  the 
question  before  us.  At  heart  they  may  in  fact  cherish  the 
same  mutual  hostility ;  but  from  a  dislike  of  controversy,  or 
from  a  disingenuous  habit  of  reserve,  or  from  a  temper  of 
compromising,  or  from  a  staid,  conservative  spirit,  or  from 
some  narrowness  of  mental  view,  they  fail  to  see  both  sides  of 
the  question  at  once,  and  utterly  neglect  the  one  interest  in 
their  exclusive  pursuit  of  the  other.  Let  us,  however,  sketch 
them  separately  before  we  proceed  to  estimate  their  common 
errors. 

On  the  one  side,  we  find  the  indifferent  religionist  or  reli' 
gious  indifferentist,  who  does  not  invade  but  simply  ignores, 
the  province  of  science.  In  his  view,  the  facts  of  Nature  have 
nothing  to  do  with  the  truths  of  Scripture,  and  are  to  be 
treated  as  absolutely  irrelevant.  When  any  scientific  theory 
runs  counter  to  his  exegesis,  he  is  at  no  pains  to  inquire  into 
the  relative  credibility  and  value  of  either ;  and  should  any 
scientific  discovery  shed  new  illustration  upon  a  revealed  doc- 
trine, he  shuns  it  as  a  questionable  admixture  of  sacred  with 
secular  or  profane  learning.  He  still  clings  to  the  interpreta- 
tions of  a  former  and  darker  age,  in  the  face  of  modern  re- 
search, and  refuses  either  to  correct  or  improve  them.  The- 
ology, the  true  mother  of  the  sciences,  is  turned  by  him  into 
a  monster,  who  spurns  them  away  even  when  they  come  \\'ith 
joined  hands  to  kneel  at  her  feet. 

On  the  other. side,  we  find  the  indifferent  scientist  or  scien- 
tific indifferentist,  who  does  not  invade,  but  simply  ignores  the 
province  of  religion.  Its  mysteries  are,  in  his  eyes,  too  tran- 
scendental   and   vague    to   be    included    in    exact    inquiries. 


96  Origin  of  Modern  IndiffcreJttism.  [fart  I. 

Should  his  theories  run  against  any  reigning  doctrine  or  in- 
terpretation of  Scripture,  he  is  in  no  wise  troubled  at  the  dis- 
crepancy ;  or  should  they  seem  to  require  any  of  its  ideas  and 
records  for  their  own  rational  support,  he  almost  scorns  them 
as  unscientific  and  prejudicial.  Even  his  vocabulary  has  be- 
come more  Pagan  than  Christian.  His  God  is  but  the  ab- 
straction of  a  Great  First  Cause,  or  a  personification  called  Na- 
ture ;  all  divine  manifestations  and  purposes  are,  in  his  view, 
mere  phenomena,  with  their  causes  and  laws ;  creation,  as  a 
whole,  is  but  a  cosmos  or  system  without  an  intelligent  Au- 
thor, or  an  intelligible  object,  to  give  it  consistency  and 
grandeur.  Science,  torn  by  him  from  that  theology  which 
nurtured  her,  is  left  to  wander  as  an  orphaned  vagabond  in 
the  universe. 

If  we  seek  the  historical  beginnings  of  such  indifferentism, 
in  either  of  its  forms,  we  shall  find  them  wherever  the  love  of 
a  theory  or  of  a  creed  has  proved  stronger  than  the  love  of 
truth.  It  was  somewhat  of  this  spirit,  under  its  scientific 
phase,  which  led  the  early  Greek  sophists,  whilst  observing 
outward  respect  for  the  reigning  mythology,  to  corrupt  the 
faith  of  the  Athenian  youth,  like  certain  savants  in  our  day, 
by  adroit  word-tricks  and  a  specious  show  of  little  knowledge. 
It  was  somewhat  of  this  spirit,  under  its  religious  phase,  which 
prompted  the  early  Latin  fathers,  whilst  appreciating  pagan 
learning,  to  resist  its  introduction  into  the  Church,  like  cer- 
tain divines  of  our  time,  from  a  well-meant  fear  that  it  might 
sophisticate  the  clergy  or  the  people.  And  even  among  the 
later  Latin  schoolmen,  when  the  scholastic  phrenzy  was  at  its 
height,  there  were  not  wanting  instances,  here  and  there,  of 
an  ironical  skepticism  or  of  an  ascetic  pietism,  which  were  but 
masked  forms  of  the  same  spirit.  But  it  was  not  until  the 
Reformation  had  been  driven  to  the  opposite  extremes,  de- 
scribed in  the  last  lecture,  that  a  recoil  ensued  towards  that 
mutual  indifference,  that  studied  avoidance,  which  has  taken 
the  place  of  the  open  conflicts  of  past  generations.  It  was 
after  modern  sectarianism  had  issued  in  a  medley  of  creeds 
and  churches,  that  many  scientists  became  latitudinarian 
upon  religious  questions  ;  and  it  was  after  modern  infidelity 
had  made  disastrous  inroads  upon  orthodoxy,  that  many  reli- 


CHAP.  III.] 


The  Great  Schism  in  the  Sciences. 


97 


gionists  grew  distrustful  of  scientific  researches.     And  now  at 
length  we  behold,  as  the  two  resulting  and  most  conspicuous 
phases  of  current  thought,  on  the  one  side,  an  imposing  scio-  , 
lism,  which  would  politely  bow  all  religion  out  of  science,  and  ^ 
on  the  other  side,  a  lofty  dogmatism,  which  would  austerely 
frown  all  science  out  of  religion. 

In  proceeding  now  to  sketch  the  progress  of  this  indifferent 
spirit,  we  shall  not  attempt,  strictly  speaking,  a  full  philo- 
sophical history  of  the  sciences,  showing  their  internal  growth 
and  external  connection ;  nor  yet  a  full  philosophical  histoiy 
of  dogmas,  unfolding  their  varied  phases  and  relations;  though 
an  outline  of  both  these  histories  must  necessarily  be  involved. 
But  our  object  will  be  simply  to  trace  in  each  science  that 
great  schism  between  rational  and  revealed  knowledge  which, 
for  the  last  three  centuries,  has  been  gradually  advancing;  first 
through  a  stage  of  healthful  separation,  marked  by  ascertained 
facts  and  truths ;  then  through  a  stage  of  unconscious  avoid- 
ance filled  with  various  hypotheses  and  dogmas ;  and  at  length 
to  a  stage  of  open  rupture  issuing  in  mere  sciolism  on  the  ra- 
tional side,  and  dogmatism  on  the  revealed  side,  with  a  cor- 
responding breach  throughout  all  modern  civilization.  In 
other  words,  we  shall  present  two  parallel  histories  of  the  di- 
viding sciences,  as  they  will  appear  in  three  separative  stages, 
more  or  less  successive  and  chronological,  according  to  the 
followins;  scheme: 


THE  GREAT   SCHISM    BETWEEN  SCIENCE  AND    RELIGION. 


1st  Stage,  A.D.  1700. 
Scientific  Facts  and   Theories. 


2d  Stage,  A.D.  1800. 
Scientific  Hypotheses. 


3d  Stage,  A.D.  1900. 
Science  without  Religion. 


IN 

ASTRONOMY. 

GEOLOGY. 

ANTHROPOLOGY. 

PSYCHOLOGY. 

SOCIOLOGY. 

THEOLOGY. 

METAPHYSICS. 

PHILOSOPHY. 

CIVILIZATION. 


1st  Stage,  A.D.  1700. 
:  Religious  Truths  &  Doctrines 

2d  Stage,  A.D.  1800. 
Religious  Dogmas. 


3d  Stage,  A.D.  1900. 
Religion  without  Science. 


98  TJic  Schism  in  Astronomy.  [part  i. 

For  the  materials  of  these  sketches  we  must  rely,  primarily, 
upon  such  historians  of  science  as  the  elder  Morell,  Playfair, 
Whewell,  Cuvier,  Comte,  Pouchet,  Humboldt,  Lyell,  Somer- 
ville,  and  upon  such  historians  of  doctrine  as  Hase,  Hagen- 
bach,  Dorner,  Meyer,  Hodge,  Shedd,  and  Krauth ;  but 
also  and  mainly  upon  the  authorities  cited,  whose  opinions 
will  be  found  stated,  substantially,  in  their  own  language.  It 
may  be  well  further  to  remark  that  the  terms  sciolists  and 
dogmatists  are  only  used  to  denote  such  scientists  as  avow- 
edly ignore  all  religious  truths,  and  such  religionists  as  con- 
sciously exclude  all  scientific  facts,  rather  than  those  whose 
mutual  indifference  may  simply  be  due  to  absorjDtion  in  their 
special  pursuits. 

Reviewing  first  the  physical  sciences,  we  shall  there  find  that 
amid  the  border  warfare  of  infidels  and  apologists  during  the 
last  three  centuries,  the  great  body  of  the  scientific  specialists 
and  professional  divines  have  secluded  themselves  in  their 
own  provinces,  where  they  have  been  fain  to  construct  sep- 
arate systems  of  truth,  until  by  gradual  avoidance  in  each 
natural  science,  they  dwell  apart  as  mere  sciolists  and  dog- 
matists, like  neighboring  potentates,  whose  former  raids  and 
forays  have  died  into  an  armed  frontier. 

The  Schism  in  Astronomy. 

In  astronomy,  for  example,  the  two  antagonists  have  long 
since  separated,  by  divergent  steps,  into  a  .fixed  indifference. 

On  the  rational  side  of  the  science,  there  have  been  suc- 
cessive departures  from  the  revealed  doctrine  of  the  heavens. 
The  first  afid  most  legitimate  stage  was  that  of  abandoning 
the  false  Biblical  astronomy  of  the  fathers  and  schoolmen. 
It  was  the  time  when  the  telescope  was  disclosing  innumera- 
ble worlds  beyond  the  heaven  of  the  Church,  and  enthusiastic 
explorers  were  revolutionizing  the  whole  popular  conception 
of  the  world.  Nicholas  of  Cusa,  as  early  as  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury, in  his  "  Learned  Ignorance,"  had  revived  the  Pythago- 
rean notion  of  the  earth's  revolution  around  the  sun,  con- 
sidered as  the  noblest  of  the  heavenly  bodies,  the  source  of 
heat  and  light,  and  the  great  central  hearth  of  the  uoiverse  ; 
but  the  suggestion  seemed  then  so  fanciful,  that  it  was  treated 


CHAP,  in.]  Scientific  Astronomy.  99 

rather  as  a  harmless  paradox  than  as  a  heresy.  Nicholas  Co- 
pernicus, known  as  the  founder  of  the  solar  system,  in  his 
celebrated  treatise  on  the  "  Revolutions  of  the  Celestial  Orbs," 
propounding  the  conjecture  of  Cusa  as  a  mathematical  theo- 
rem, demonstrated  the  motions  of  the  earth  and  planets  upon 
their  axes  and  around  the  sun,  that  great  lamp  of  the  world, 
placed  in  the  midst  of  the  temple  of  nature ;  deprecating  the 
while  not  so  much  the  attacks  of  astronomers  as  of  divines, 
or  vain  babblers,  as  he  terms  them,  who,  knowing  nothing  of 
mathematics,  yet  assume  the  right  of  judging  on  account  of 
some  text  of  Scripture,  perversely  wrested  to  their  purpose. 
Galileo,  the  first  great  astronomical  discoverer,  proceeding  to 
verify  the  hypothesis  of  Copernicus  by  the  telescope,  an- 
nounced in  his  "Sidereal  Messenger"  the  satellites  of  Jupiter 
as  a  visible  model  of  the  solar  system,  whilst  in  his  "Dia- 
logues" he  defended  it  with  mathematical  reasonings  against 
the  erroneous  biblical  interpretation  which  hindered  its  popu- 
lar reception.  The  indomitable  Kepler,  by  the  extraordinary 
calculations  in  his  great  work  on  the  "Motions  of  Mars," 
which  he  likened  to  a  long  battle  with  that  planet,  described 
the  exact  form  and  dimensions  of  the  celestial  orbits,  and 
demolished  the  complicated  crystalline  globes  which  had 
been  revolving  around  the  orthodox  horizon  since  the  time  of 
Ptolemy ;  advising  that  whoever  is  too  weak  to  receive  the 
Copernican  system  without  harm  to  his  piety,  should  leave 
the  school  of  astronomy  and  worship  God  through  his  natural 
eyes,  with  which  alone  he  can  see.  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  the 
greatest  of  devout  astronomers,  in  his  immortal  "Principles  of 
Natural  Philosophy,"  completing  the  researches  of  Coperni- 
cus, Galileo,  and  Newton,  with  the  discovery  of  universal 
gravitation,  fully  demonstrated  that  heliocentric  system  of  the 
ancient  Greeks  which,  after  lying  buried  under  the  traditions 
of  the  Church,  has  now  become  the  orthodox  theory  of 
Christendom.  Euler,  Clairvault,  La  Grange  and  La  Place,  to- 
gether worked  upon  the  mechanical  problem  of  the  solar  sys- 
tem until  they  established  its  perfect  harmony  and  stability  by 
showing  the  very  perturbations  of  the  planets  to  be  but  peri- 
odical movements,  like  immense  pendulums,  beating  ages  for 
seconds.     At  length  the  two  Herschels,  Sir  William  and  Sir 


lOO  Tlie  Schism  in  Astronomy.  [part  i. 

John,  successively  gauging  the  northern  and  southern  hem- 
ispheres with  the  telescope,  unveiled  the  very  heaven  of 
heavens  beyond  our  solar  firmament,  as  they  resolved  nebulae 
into  stars,  stars  into  suns,  and  suns  into  galaxies,  crowded  to- 
gether like  golden  sands,  each  grain  a  world,  and  so  remote 
that  ages  must  have  sped,  while  the  light  flew  which  makes 
them  visible  to  our  eye.  And  since  that  time,  other  great  as- 
tronomers such  as  Bessel,  Struve  and  Arago,  Kirchoff,  Sec- 
chi  and  Huggins  have  been  occupied  with  the  remaining  prob- 
lems of  determining  the  different  astral  systems,  the  revolution 
of  our  own  solar  system  among  them,  even  their  chemical  con- 
stitution and  phenomena,  as  disclosed  by  the  spectroscope, 
and  their  probable  combination  in  some  one  universal  system, 
regulated  by  physical  laws. 

The  next  more  questionable  stage  of  indifference,  was  the 
gradual  substitution  of  a  hypothetical  astronomy,  in  place  of 
the  true  biblical  astronomy,  which  still  remained  unharmed. 
The  whole  doctrine  of  creation  being  ignored,  numerous 
speculations  arose  as  to  the  origin,  the  design,  and  the  destiny 
of  the  heavenly  bodies.  ' 

As  to  their  origin,  there  were  two  rival  hypotheses.  The 
one  was  that  of  a  spontaneous  growth  of  worlds.  It  had 
been  held  by  Democritus  and  Lucretius  that  the  original 
atoms  struggling  together  throughout  space  and  time,  after 
infinite  trials  brought  forth  from  chaos  the  existing  universe 
as  the  fittest  to  survive  the  mazy  conflict.  And  though  the 
hypothesis  had  slumbered  during  the  early  and  middle  ages 
of  the  church,  until  it  was  revived  by  Bruno  and  Gassendi  in 
the  seventeenth  century,  yet  it  has  since  come  forth  again 
with  renewed  vigor  and  in  more  scientific  forms.  Descartes 
who  is  said  to  have  been  the  first  to  indulge  the  pleasing 
fancy  of  making  a  world,  in  a  "Treatise  on  the  Universe," 
which  was  awhile  withheld  for  fear  of  the  fate  of  Galileo, 
but  afterwards  incorporated  in  his  Principia,  had  proposed 
to  show  how  the  solar  system,  though  created  perfect,  might 
have  arisen  on  mechanical  principles,  from  a  series  of  vor- 
tices, or  vast  eddies  of  different  kinds  of  matter  whirling, 
under  divine  impulses,  with  the  sun  and  planets,  like  boats 
in    a    maelstrom.     Leibnitz,   with    more   mechanical  know- 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Astronomy.  lOi 

ledge  than  Descartes,  and  greater  philosophical  boldness, 
applied  his  peculiar  theoiy  of  monads  in  "A  New  Phy- 
sical Hypothesis  not  to  be  despised  either  by  the  Coperni- 
cans  or  by  the  Tychonians,"  according  to  which  the  heavenly 
bodies  were  composed  of  self-acting  atoms,  ever  proj^agating 
and  sustaining,  by  their  own  impulses,  the  complicated  revo- 
lutions of  the  solar  system.  Immanuel  Kant,  employing  the 
more  advanced  physics  of  his  day  in  his  "  General  Natural 
History  and  Theory  of  the  Celestial  Bodies,"  attempted  to 
account  for  the  mechanical  origin  of  the  universe  by  supposing 
an  immensity  of  attractive  and  repulsive  particles,  out  of  which 
the  sun  and  planets  have  been  developed.  At  length  La 
Place,  in  his  celebrated  "  System  of  the  Universe,"  completed 
the  speculations  of  Descartes,  Leibnitz,  and  Kant  by  postu- 
lating throughout  primeval  space  a  luminous  vapor  or  fire- 
mist  which,  as  it  revolved  and  cooled,  became  condensed, 
first  into  a  central  igneous  body,  like  the  sun;  then  into  rota- 
ting rings,  such  as  those  of  Saturn ;  then  successively  into 
gaseous  and  watery  globes,  like  Jupiter  and  Uranus ;  and  at 
length  into  solid  shells,  such  as  that  which  encloses  the  fiery 
core  of  our  earth. 

And  these  speculations  were  soon  extended  to  the  re- 
motest stars  and  galaxies.  Kepler,  Kant,  and  Lambert 
had  already  argued,  from  their  respective  theories,  that  the 
luminous  clouds  floating  in  space  were  but  relics  of  the 
material  out  of  which  the  heavenly  bodies  had  been  formed. 
The  elder  Herschel,  applying  the  hypothesis  of  La  Place  to 
the  sidereal  heavens,  conjectured  the  unresolved  nebulje  to  be 
cosmical  masses  in  the  act  of  condensing  into  suns  and  planets, 
and  even  detected  in  some  of  them,  by  the  telescope,  sup- 
posed changes  of  structure,  lucid  points  glittering  as  the 
nuclei  of  new  worlds,  or  rather  of  ancient  worlds,  so  remote 
that  ages  must  elapse  ere  the  tardy  light  can  paint  their  finish- 
ed form  in  the  eye  of  man.  Henry  Schubert,  who  adopted 
for  a  time  the  views  of  Herschel,  in  his  treatise  on  the 
"  Primitive  World  of  Fixed  Stars,"  poetically  likened  these 
new-born  worlds  to  great  golden  birds  coming  forth  from  the 
^Sto'  o*"  s^^^^  covered  with  parts  of  the  shell,  remaining  from 
the  unconsumed  nebulous  matter.     Alexander  Humboldt,  in 


I02  Tlic  Scliism  in  Astronomy.  [part  i, 

his  "  Cosmos,"  describes  the  whole  starry  heavens  as  a  vast 
nursery  of  worlds,  teeming  with  the  greatest  variety  of  cosmical 
productions,  as  trees  in  a  forest  are  seen  coexisting  in  all  stages 
of  growth,  and  maintains  that  the  celestial  spectacle  is  only  in 
appearance  simultaneous  and  without  perspective,  having 
beyond  it  an  endless  succession  of  stars  and  galaxies  too  dis- 
tant to  be  portrayed  as  yet  in  other  than  their  embryo  forms, 
as  mere  films  and  dots  of  light.  Johannes  von  Gumpach,  in  an 
elaborate  work  entitled  "  Baby- Worlds,"  even  attributes  or- 
ganic life  to  the  heavenly  bodies,  describing  comets  and 
nebulae  as  the  infant  members  of  the  planetary  family,  and 
heirs  apparent  to  the  solar  empire.  Professor  Proctor  also, 
in  his  recent  Lectures,  holds  to  a  literal  birth  and  growth  of 
planets  and  suns  by  an  accretion,  rather  than  contraction  of 
nebulous  matter  as  massed  in  solid  nuclei  and  fed  by  meteors, 
comets  and  star-dust,  at  a  rate  so  slow  that  the  earth  could 
not  have  grown  more  than  an  inch  in  many  millions  of  years. 
And  the  latest  advocates  of  the  nebular  theory  now  claim 
that  the  spectroscope  is  actually  verifying  it  by  exhibiting  in 
the  chemical  constitution  of  different  stars  all  the  successive 
phases  of  cosmic  growth,  nebula,  sun  and  plant,  as  plainly 
bursting  into  life  throughout  the  heavens,  as  the  germ,  leaf 
and  flower  at  our  feet. 

But  the  other  hypothesis  was  that  of  a  fixed  series  of 
worlds.  It  had  been  taught  by  Plato  and  Cicero,  as  well  as 
the  fathers  and  the  schoolmen,  that  the  universe  was  originally 
created  as  a  cosmos  or  mundus;  and  ever  since  has  remained 
in  its  finished  order  and  beauty.  And  upon  this  doctrine  not 
a  few  modern  astronomers  have  proceeded  in  their  cosmical 
speculations.  Galileo,  even  in  advance  of  the  telescopic  resolu- 
tion of  nebulae,  refused  to  believe  them  other  than  distant  clus- 
ters of  stars.  The  elder  Herschel  himself,  though  he  finally 
adopted  the  opinion  that  they  were  mere  remnants  of  our  own 
solar  or  astral  system,  drifting  within  the  visible  heavens,  had 
been  at  first  inclined  to  regard  them  as  extremely  remote 
galaxies  outside  of  the  milky  way,  and  not  yet  in  reach  of  the 
telescope.  The  younger  Herschel,  advancing  beyond  his 
father's  explorations  to  the  conclusion  that  all  nebulae  are  but 
clustered  suns,  a  sort  of  star-dust  of  worlds,  suggested  that 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Astronomy.  103 

the  coexistence  of  a  series  of  organized  suns  and  planets,  in 
different  stages  of  relative  perfection,  does  not  necessarily  im- 
ply transition  and  development,  if  we  suppose  all  progress  in 
the  present  state  of  nature  to  have  long  since  reached  its  end, 
as  we  see  among  the  animal  species.  Schubert,  who  passed 
from  the  elder  to  the  younger  Herschcl,  in  his  "  Fabric  of  the 
World,"  described  the  various  forms  of  nebular  and  stellar 
systems,  through  all  their  grades,  as  but  parts  of  one  vast  co- 
ordained  whole  which,  like  the  organic  scale  from  the  mol- 
lusk  to  the  mammal,  may  have  originated  together,  and 
henceforth  subsist  side  by  side.  Professor  Lament  of  Mu- 
nich, an  eminent  observer  in  the  same  field,  argued  from  the 
oldest  sources  of  information  as  to  the  condition  of  the 
heavens,  that  the  whole  cosmical  structure,  after  some  sort  of 
a  formative  period,  has  long  since  passed  into  a  state  of  sus- 
tained equilibrium,  and  all  preserving  order,  like  that  which 
La  Place  has  shown  to  exist  in  our  solar  system.  Madler, 
the  distinguished  astronomer  of  Dorpat,  reasoning  from  the 
same  analogy  of  the  solar  system,  in  his  work  entitled  the 
"  Central  Sun,"  has  challenged  the  posterity  of  astronomers 
to  the  problem  that  the  whole  sidereal  heavens  from  the  out- 
ermost nebulae  will  be  found  to  include  a  series  of  concentric 
galaxies  or  zones  of  suns  and  planets  circling,  together  with 
our  own  little  system,  about  a  preponderating  cluster  of  suns, 
or  common  centre  of  gravity  in  the  imperial  group  of  the 
Pleiades,  near  the  bright  star  Alcyone.  And  it  may  be  that 
the  spectroscope  will  yet  combine  with  the  telescope  to  show 
that  the  order  and  variety  which  obtain  upon  earth  are  but  re- 
flected throughout  the  heavens  in  countless  species  of  worlds, 
ranging  from  the  unformed  nebula  that  wanders  on  the  verge 
of  space  up  to  the  most  richly  garnished  planet  that  careers 
around  the  brightest  sun. 

As  to  the  design  of  the  heavenly  bodies,  two  opposite  hy- 
potheses also  arose.  One  was  that  of  a  plurality  of  inhabited 
worlds.  Newton  and  Bentley  treated  this  natural  suggestion 
as  a  grave  question  of  science.  Christian  Huyghens,  the 
distinguished  Dutch  astronomer,  bequeathed  to  tlie  world  as 
his  best  legacy,  a  "  Cosmotheoros,"  or  Theory  of  the  Uni- 
verse, containing  ingenious   conjectures  with   regard   to   the 


104  The  Schisvi  in  AstronoDiy.  [part  i. 

celestial  orbs,  their  garniture,  the  inhabitants  adapted  to  their 
structure,  and  even  their  moral  as  well  as  physical  condition. 
Sir  William  Herschel,  more  recently,  in  the  "Philosophical 
Transactions,"  inferred  from  the  climate  and  scenery  of  the 
moon,  that  "it  must  be  inhabited  like  our  earth,  and  agreed 
with  Arago  in  characterizing  the  sun  as  richly  stored  with 
inhabitants  dwelling  upon  an  opaque  globe  behind  his  daz- 
zling photosphere.  Dr.  Lardner,  in  his  "Museum  of  Science 
and  Art,"  argued,  from  the  analogy  of  the  polar  and  tropical 
zones  of  our  globe,  that  the  outer  planets  farthest  from  the 
sun,  Jupiter,  Saturn  and  Neptune,  as  well  as  the  inner  planets, 
are  tenanted  with  races  closely  resembling,  if  not  identica'l, 
with  those  with  which  the  earth  is  peopled.  Professor  Owen, 
the  distinguished  naturalist,  in  his  work  on  "The  Nature  of 
Limbs,"  still  more  profoundly  reasoned  from  the  doctrine  of 
archetypes  or  ideals,  as  well  as  from  the  mechanism  of  the 
sun  and  satellites,  that  the  inhabitants  of  the  planets  may  be 
organized  on  the  vertebrate  type,  affording  numerous  con- 
ceivable examples  not  realized  in  this  little  orb  of  ours.  Sir 
Humphrey  Davy,  in  his  "  Consolations  of  Travel,"  imagined 
that  he  saw  in  the  planet  Saturn  highly  organized  beings, 
whose  gifted  intellects  were  endowed  with  membranous  bodies 
and  convoluted  probosces,  as  organs  of  exquisite  sensibility 
and  perception.  And  these  bold  conjectures  have  been 
pushed  into  the  remotest  stellar  worlds.  Sir  John  Herschel, 
by  his  telescopic  resolution  of  nebula  into  suns,  believed  him- 
self simply  to  have  unveiled  a  populous  immensity  too  be- 
wildering for  mortal  fancy,  and  even  speculated  upon  the 
probable  scenery  of  those  distant  seats  of  intelligence,  as  re- 
flected in  a  starry  kaleidoscope,  varied  as  the  flowers  of  .spring 
and  more  brilliant  than  the  most  superb  jewelry.  Schubert, 
following  Herschel  with  still  more  exuberant  fancy,  contrasted 
the  ponderous  globes  of  our  solar  system,  as  swayed  by  an- 
tagonistic forces,  like  crude,  massive  machinery,  with  those 
harmonious  spheres  of  light  whose  etherial  inhabitants  bask 
under  a  thousand  suns,  know  neither  day  nor  night,  nor  birth 
nor  death,  and  are  forever  strangers  to  terror,  to  sickness  and 
to  tears.  The  great  Danish  naturalist,  Oersted,  by  the  pro- 
found conjectures  in  his  treatise  on  "The  Soul  in  Nature," 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Astronomy.  105 

peopled  the  mighty  amphitheatre  of  worlds,  from  our  little 
planetary  group  up  through  the  circling  suns  and  galaxies, 
with  corresponding  orders  of  intelligence,  ranged  in  different 
stages  of  cosmic  development,  and  together  forming  one  uni- 
versal organism  of  reason.  Professor  Proctor,  in  his  "Other 
Worlds  than  Ours,"  has  recently  conjectured  from  the  heat 
and  light  of  the  stars  that,  like  our  sun,  they  are  encircled 
with  life-bearing  worlds,  which  they  nourish,  and  that  even 
the  works  of  intelligent  creatures  may  be  going  on  in  the 
planets  of  Vega,  Capella,  and  the  blazing  Sirius.  ]\I.  Flam- 
marion,  in  his  treatise  on  Celestial  Marvels,  not  only  argues 
from  physical  analogies  that  the  planets,  like  the  earth,  are 
kindled  by  the  sun  into  seats  of  life  and  thought,  but  dilates 
upon  the  magnificent  scenery  of  other  solar  systems  in  Orion 
and  Cassiopea,  whose  blue  and  red  and  green  suns  must  pro- 
duce for  their  attendant  orbs  a  succession  of  brilliant  days 
through  all  the  colors  of  the  spectrum.  And  indeed,  with  the 
telescope  and  spectroscope  already  unfolding  the  mechanical 
and  chemical  constitution  of  the  most  distant  planets  and 
stars,  it  would  seem  not  at  all  incredible  that  the  question  of 
their  organic  character  or  habitability  may  yet  somehow  be 
brought  to  the  test  of  physical  investigation. 

But  the  other  hypothesis  was,  that  our  earth  is  the  only 
habitable  world.  VAnd  it  has  not  been  without  some  dis- 
tinguished advocates.  Galileo  seems  to  have  treated  the  no- 
tion of  planetary  races  as  a  mere  jest  rather  than  as  a  sci- 
entific hypothesis;  perhaps,  however,  because  his  enemies 
were  inclined  to  treat  it  as  a  heresy.  Kepler,  with  no  such 
restraints  upon  him,  in  his  translation  of  Plutarch's  "Dia- 
logues on  the  Face  of  the  Moon,"  indulged  in  sportive  reflec- 
tions upon  the  inhabitants  of  that  satellite,  which  he  named 
Levana.  Fontanelle,  in  his  elegant  "  Conversations  on  the 
Plurality  of  Worlds,"  popularizing  a  pleasantry  which  Lac- 
tantius  had  assailed  in  the  writings  of  Lucian,  entertained  the 
wits  of  Paris  with  lively  disquisitions  on  the  scenery  of  the 
neighboring  planets,  and  the  Martial,  Mercurial,  Jovial,  and 
Saturnine  character  of  their  respective  inhabitants.  Voltaire, 
in  one  of  his  satirical  romances,  represents  the  secretary  of 
the  Academy  of  Sciences  in  the  planet  Saturn  setting  out  on 


io6  The  Schism  in  Astronomy.  [part  i. 

a  philosophical  tour  of  the  universe  with  Micromegas,  an  in- 
habitant of  the  Dog-star,  after  mutually  complaining  of  their 
limited  means  of  knowledge,  though  the  one  had  seventy- 
senses  and  the  other  a  thousand. 

And  it  was  not  long  before  this  ironical  treatment  of  the 
subject  began  to  assume  the  form  of  a  scientific  scepti- 
ticism,  with  advancing  knowledge  of  the  physical  characteris- 
tics of  the  different  heavenly  bodies.  All  astronomers  -have 
probably  maintained,  with  the  elder  Herschel,  that  comets  and 
asteroids  are  incapable  of  sustaining  organized  life,  being  mere 
fragments  of  the  original  nebulosity  or  globules  not  yet  con- 
densed into  a  habitable  orb.  The  younger  Herschel  admitted, 
what  has  since  been  proved,  that  the  moon  at  least  is  destitute 
of  anything  like  human  existence,  having  a  mere  volcanic  sur- 
face, without  air  or  water.  Professor  Phaff,  in  his  work  on 
"Man  and  the  Stars,"  whilst  attributing  a  highly  refined  or- 
ganization to  the  stellar  spheres,  regarded  the  planets  around 
us  as  mere  inchoate  worlds,  at  most  possessed  of  inferior 
plants  or  fantastic  creatures,  and  serving  no  higher  purpose 
than  luminaries  to  our  earth.  The  late  Dr.  Whewell,  now 
known  to  be  the  author  of  the  anonymous  "  Essay  on  the 
Plurality  of  Worlds,"  startled  scientific  circles  with  the  theory 
that  our  planet  is  the  only  world  in  the  universe;  that  it  re- 
volves in  that  temperate  zone  of  the  solar  system  between  the 
extremes  of  heat  and  cold,  where  alone  high  organic  life  is 
possible ;  that  the  outer  planets  are  mere  globes  of  water  and 
ice,  while  the  inner  are  composed  of  cinder  and  slag;  and  that 
the  sun  itself  is  but  the  molten  nucleus  of  a  primitive  nebula, 
whose  gaseous  fragments,  long  since  extinguished,  now  only 
shine,  like  the  corruscations  of  a  fire-wheel,  in  the  form  of 
comets,  meteors,  and  stars.  Professor  Winchell,  in  a  little 
treatise  on  the  "  Geology  of  the  Stars,"  has  argued  from  re- 
cent spectroscopic  researches,  that  suns  are  but  condensed 
nebulae  or  incandescent  mist;  that  planets  are  more  advanced 
worlds  than  suns,  having  gradually  cooled  and  become  en- 
crusted with  strata;  that  the  nearer  planets  are  still  the  abodes 
of  monsters,  such  as  once  tenanted  our  earth,  before  the  ap- 
pearance of  rhan;  and  that  the  older  planets  have  already 
passed  the  habitable  stage,  the  moon  remaining  but  as  a  sort 


CHAP.  III.]  Scie7itific  Astronomy.  10/ 

of  fossil  world  or  ancient  cinder  suspended  in  the  heavens. 
Professor  Proctor  also  has  suggested  that  we  have  no  right  to 
assume  that  every  instant  in  the  history  of  a  world  should  be 
made  available  for  intelligent  life,  but  that  in  fact  the  chances 
are  millions  of  millions  to  one  against  any  special  planet  be- 
ing inhabited,  if  we  judge  by  the  analogy  of  the  brief  time 
during  which  man  has  appeared  upon  the  earth.  And  cer- 
tainly geology  may  unite  with  astronomy  in  suggesting  that 
the  climatic  transformations  of  different  globes,  as  they  change 
their  axes  and  orbits,  must  involve  corresponding  cycles  of  life 
and  death,  a  kind  of  metempsychosis  of  worlds,  so  that  but 
one  or  a  few  of  them  could  become  habitable  at  a  time. 

Besides  these  questions,  the  destiny  of  the  heavenly  bodies 
has  also  been  a  fruitful  theme  of  speculation.  Some  astrono- 
mers have  favored  the  notion  of  a  final  chaos.  Newton  had 
very  early  expressed  his  conviction  that  without  some  divine 
interposition,  the  accumulating  perturbations  of  the  planets 
would  ultimately  bring  the  whole  system  into  confusion,  and 
speculated  upon  the  dangers  of  a  collision  with  comets,  on  the 
supposition  of  their  enormous  heat  and  solidity.  Halley  de- 
precated the  approach  of  the  great  comet  of  i68o,  as  likely  to 
crush  the  earth  or  change  the  seasons  ;  and  on  the  assump- 
tion that  the  celestial  orbits  are  contracting  slowly  through 
the  resistance  of  an  etherial  medium,  anticipated  a  time  when 
the  planets  would  be  drawn  into  the  sun,  and  the  whole  ex- 
isting order  be  remanded  to  the  ancient  chaos.  And  these 
views,  in  later  times,  have  received  still  more  scientific  ex- 
pression. It  has  been  maintained  by  such  physicists,  as  Helm- 
holtz.  Grove,  and  Tyndal  that  all  material  forces,  mechanical, 
thermal  and  vital,  with  their  actions  and  reactions,  must 
gradually  tend  to  equilibrium  and  rest ;  that  perpetual  motion 
in  the  machinery  of  the  heavens  is  as  impossible  as  in  any 
mechanism  upon  earth ;  that  the  friction  of  the  planets  and  the 
cooling  of  the  sun  will  ultimately  cause  them  to  be  precipi- 
tated upon  each  other  and,  through  their  collision,  dissipated 
into  the  igneous  vapor  from  which  they  sprang;  and  that,  con- 
sequently, without  some  infinite  miracle,  all  other  suns  and 
galaxies  of  suns,  as  they  sweep  with  diminishing  force  around 
the  dreadful  vortex,  must  at  length  be  whelmed  in  a  general 


io8  The  Schism  in  Astronomy.  [part  i. 

wreck  of  matter  and  crush  of  worlds.  Professor  Stephen 
Alexander  has  argued  that  the  very  forms  of  the  nebulae  and 
clusters,  such  as  the  broken  ring,  spiral  and  fire-wheel,  indi- 
cate a  stupendous  process  of  mechanical  disruption  and  dis- 
persion throughout  the  whole  sidereal  heavens.  And  Pro- 
fessor Winchell,  in  his  "  Sketches  of  Creation,"  describes  the 
awful  catastrophe  which  must  ensue  when  the  last  man  shall 
gaze  upon  the  frozen  earth,  when  the  planets,  one  after 
another,  shall  tum.ble,  as  charred  ruins,  into  the  sun,  when 
the  suns  themselves  shall  be  piled  together  into  a  cold  and 
lifeless  mass,  as  exhausted  warriors  upon  a  battle-field,  and 
stagnation  and  death  settle  upon  the  spent  powers  of  nature. 

Other  astronomers,  however,  have  leaned  toward  the  notion 
of  a  permanent  cosmos.  La  Place,  in  opposition  to  the  con- 
jectures of  Newton,  claimed  to  have  mathematically  proved 
that  the  secular  agitations  of  the  moon  and  planets,  instead  of 
being  cumulative  and  destructive,  were  periodical  and  conser- 
vative, absolutely  ensuring  the  stability  of  the  solar  system, 
unless  there  should  be  some  foreign  cause  of  disturbance. 
Arago  maintained  that  no  such  disturbance  could  arise  from 
the  incursion  of  comets,  the  periodical  return  of  which  Halley 
and  Clairvault  had  predicted  and  verified,  whilst  the  discovery 
of  their  transparent,  vaporous  nature  was  fitted  to  dispel  all 
fears  of  disaster,  even  in  case  of  their  collision  with  the  earth. 
Mrs.  Somerville,  in  her  "Connection  of  the  Physical  Sciences," 
has  suggested  that  the  supposed  etherial  medium  could  not 
retard  the  primitive  momentum  of  the  planets,  unless  that 
medium  itself  be  rotating  in  a  contrary  direction,  as  seems  to 
be  the  case  with  the  retrograde  comets,  and  that  the  different 
sidereal  systems,  so  far  from  deranging  our  own  solar  system, 
may  themselves  be  revolving  with  it  around  a  common  centre 
of  the  whole  creation  as  the  only  point  of  absolute  and  eternal 
repose.  And  to  this  idea  of  a  universal  mechanical  equili- 
brium has  been  added  one  of  a  thermal  or  chemical  nature, 
ensuring  periodic  variations  of  heat,  light  and  life  amid  all 
secular  inequalities,  the  ebb  and  flow  of  a  vis  viva  of  the  uni- 
verse, which  is  itself  a  constant  quantity.  Some  modern  phy- 
sicists have  accordingly  denied  that  there  is  any  such  uncom- 
pensated cooling  and  shrinkage  of  the  planets  as  would  ulti- 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Astro7iomy.  109 

mately  destroy  their  life-bearing  powers.  Mayer,  the  great 
German  physicist,  in  his  essay  on  Celestial  Dynamics,  has 
maintained  that  the  sun  itself  is  like  an  immense  furnace,  ever 
gaining  as  well  as  losing  heat,  through  a  supply  of  cosmical 
matter,  raining  down  upon  it  from  the  interplanetary  spaces  in 
the  form  of  aerolites,  meteoric  hail,  and  luminous  dust,  be- 
coming visible  to  the  eye  as  the  zodiacal  light.  Poisson  haz- 
arded the  bold  conjecture  that  the  entire  solar  system,  as  it 
careers  amid  myriads  of  blazing  suns,  instead  of  journeying 
toward  night  and  death,  may  be  passing  through  hot  and  cold 
regions  of  space,  and  possibly  revolving  between  extremes  of 
temperature,  like  the  summer  and  winter  of  our  earth,  but 
through  inconceivably  vaster  cycles,  with  ever-changing  cli- 
mates and  histories.  And  it  has  even  been  fancied,  what  in- 
deed almost  paralyzes  fancy  itself,  that  the  evolution  of  nebulae 
into  planets  and  dissolution  of  planets  into  nebulae,  which  is 
supposed  to  be  occurring  throughout  infinite  space  and  time, 
may  itself  be  periodic  rather  than  catastrophic,  a  sort  of  nor- 
mal birth  and  death  of  worlds,  amid  which  man  sports  upon 
the  earth  like  the  merest  animalcule  of  a  bubble,  vanishing  in 
the  sunshine. 

Q^  The  third  and  last  stage  of  perfect  indifference,  which  has 
been  reached  in  our  day,  is  that  of  repudiating  the  whole  bib- 
lical astronomy  as  no  longer  of  any  scientific  authority  and 
value.  Whilst  some  astronomers  may  have  ignored  Scrip- 
ture doctrines  simply  from  philosophical  prudence  and  taste, 
others  have  rejected  them  as  working  hypotheses,  or  even  as 
related  truths  essential  to  a  complete  theory  of  the  heavens. 
La  Place  himself,  it  will  be  remembered,  could  distinctly  avow 
that  in  his  "System  of  the  World"  he  had  no  need  for  the  hy- 
pothesis of  a  God.  Alexander  Humboldt,  it  could  not  fail 
to  be  remarked,  has  sketched  a  "  Cosmos "  in  which  the 
name  of  God  is  not  to  be  found,  concluding  his  sublime  pic- 
ture of  the  heavens  and  earth  with  no  higher  hope  than  that 
it  may  promote  a  more  animated  recognition  of  the  universe 
as  a  whole.  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  in  an  essay  on  the  Nebu- 
lar Hypothesis,  whilst  claiming  that  it  renders  the  develop- 
ment of  the  heavens  and  earth  perfectly  comprehensible,  in- 
sists that  their   origin   is    absolutely  inconceivable,   with  no 


1 10  The  Schism  in  Astronomy.  [part  i. 

more  allusion  to  the  first  verse  of  Genesis  than  if  it  had  never 
been  written.  Professor  Lovering  declared,  from  the  chair  of 
the  American  Scientific  Association,  that  in  his  view,  astrono- 
my has  no  more  to  do  with  theology  than  with  jurisprudence. 
Professor  Tyndall,  who  occasionally  quotes  Scripture  in  his 
scientific  speculations,  in  an  essay  on  "  Matter  and  F'orce," 
asserts  that  the  question  of  Napoleon  to  a  knot  of  infidel 
savants,  "Who  made  the  heavens  ?"  must  remain  unanswered. 
And  Doctor  Maudsley,  with  still  less  reserve,  in  his  recent 
article  on  the  "Limits  of  Philosophical  Inquiry,"  at  the  close 
of  an  eloquent  description  of  the  insignificance  of  man  in 
comparison  with  the  sidereal  universe,  wonders,  in  the  very 
language  of  the  Psalmist,  that  he  should  presume  to  affirm 
whose  glory  the  heavens  declare,  whose  handiwork  the  firm.a- 
ment  showeth. 

On  the  revealed  side  of  the  same  science,  however,  there 
have  been  meanwhile  corresponding  departures  from  the  ra- 
tional theory  of  the  heavens.  It  was  by  like  stages  also  that 
this  mere  separation  grew  into  a  schism.  The  first  stage 
was  that  of  abandoning  the  false  scientific  astronomy  of  the 
fathers  and  schoolmen.  It  should  be  remembered  that 
Nicholas  of  Cusa  and  Copernicus  were  themselves  orthodox 
divines,  as  well  as  scientists,  and  tiiat  the  chief  reformers 
aided  in  freeing  the  astronomical  portions  of  the  Scriptures 
from  the  mediaeval  superstitions  of  astrology  and  divination. 
Luther,  though  he  still  held  the  Ptolemaic  notion  that  the  firma- 
ment was  a  crystal  globe  turned  swiftly  around  the  earth  by 
some  angel,  denounced  the  star-peepers  and  horoscope 
mongers  who  plead  Scripture  authority  for  their  haphazard 
work  and  idolatry.  Calvin,  in  his  Genesis,  defended  the  Mo- 
saic doctrine  of  the  signs  of  heaven  for  their  chronological 
value  against  the  Chaldeans  and  fanatics,  who  divined  every- 
thing from  the  aspects  of  the  stars.  Turrettin,  through  a 
whole  chapter  of  his  "Institutes  of  Theology,"  reasoned  elab- 
orately against  a  prevalent  Scriptural  argument  for  judicial 
astrology,  as  the  art  of  prejudging  human  events  by  the  con- 
stellations was  then  termed.  The  Westminster  divines,  in 
their  "Annotations "  upon  Genesis,  though  excluding  the 
Copernican  theory  as  not  yet  sufficiently  demonstrated,  still 


CHAP.  III.]  Biblical  Astronomy.  1 1 1 

admitted  its  consistency  with  the  ]\Iosaic  system,  and  em- 
phasized the  doctrine  of  creation  as  both  an  article  of  faith 
and  a  maxim  in  philosophy.  And  gradually,  with  advancing 
science,  by  a  line  of  astronomical  theologians,  from  Derham 
to  Chalmers,  the  way  has  been  opened  for  redefining  the 
whole  doctrine  of  the  heavens,  considered  as  a  divine  creation 
and  the  abode  of  the  Father  and  the  angels. 

But,  in  the  next  more  questionable  stage  of  indifference,  still 
remained  numerous  dogmatic  divines  apparently  unconscious 
of  the  new  scientific  astronomy  which  was  emerging.  The 
great  mass  of  Greek  and  Roman  doctors,  as  well  as  Jewish 
rabbins,  simply  adhered  to  the  traditional  dogmas  respecting 
the  creation,  the  angels,  and  the  new  heavens  and  earth ;  and 
even  Protestant  theologians  betrayed  but  little  knowledge 
of  current  astronomical  discoveries  and  speculations.  As 
to  the  doctrine  of  creation,  for  example,  all  classes  were 
still  substantially  agreed  with  the  fathers  and  schoolmen. 
Roman  Catholic  divines  simply  re -affirmed  the  ancient  teach- 
ings of  the  church.  Clement  of  Alexandria,  with  the  other 
Greek  fathers,  and  in  opposition  both  to  the  Stoics  and  to 
the  Epicureans,  had  delighted  to  represent  the  creation  of  the 
world  as  a  voluntary  act  of  God's  love,  not  for  His  own  sake, 
who  needed  nothing,  but  for  the  sake  of  the  human  race  alone. 
St.  Augustine,  in  his  Confessions,  had  more  precisely  taught 
that  God  was  the  author  of  time,  as  it  could  not  exist  before 
creatures  to  measure  it ;  that  in  the  beginning  He  fashioned  the 
heavens  and  earth,  not  out  of  Himself,  but  of  nothing ;  and 
that  He  created  them  from  no  necessity,  but  of  His  own  free 
will  and  for  the  good  of  man.  Thomas  Aquinas  also,  agree- 
ing with  Augustine,  maintained  that  God  willed  from  eternity 
that  the  world  should  be  and  not  that  it  should  be  from 
eternity ;  that  with  the  world  He  created  both  space  and  time ; 
and  that  His  design  was  the  communication  to  His  creatures 
of  His  own  perfection  as  the  highest  expression  of  His  good- 
ness. Hugh  of  St.  Victor  held  that  God  was  not  the  mere 
former  but  the  author  of  matter ;  and  since  the  Creator  was  self- 
sufficient  and  man  the  last  to  be  created,  we  receive  both  the 
good  beneath  us  and  the  good  above  us,  the  former  to  supply 
our  necessities    and   the   latter  to   constitute   our  happiness. 


112  TJic  Schism  in  Astronomy.  [part  i. 

And  the  same  general  views  were  re-affirmed  by  Suarez  and 
Malebranche.  It  will  be  seen  how  readily  such  a  doctrine 
could  be  connected  with  that  Ptolemaic  or  geocentric  theory 
of  the  heavens,  which  placed  man  in  the  midst  of  the  world, 
as  the  final' cause  of  the  whole  creation,  with  sun,  moon  and 
stars  around  him  for  the  mere  lights  of  his  dwelling. 
0  Protestant  divines,  whilst  holding  similar  opinions  as  to 
the  origin  of  creation,  endeavored  to  define  more  precisely 
its  mode  and  design.  Melancthon,  in  his  "  Common  Places," 
opposed  the  Stoical  notion  of  eternal  matter  by  representing 
the  creative  act  as  a  simple  fiat,  commanding  things  to  be 
which  had  not  been  before.  Calvin,  in  his  "Institutes,"  main- 
tained that  the  actual  work  of  creation  was  accomplished  not 
in  a  moment,  but  in  six  days,  in  order  to  demonstrate  that 
the  heavens  and  earth  were  made  for  the  sake  of  man,  like  a 
large  and  splendid  mansion  gorgeously  constructed  and  ex- 
quisitely furnished.  The  Westminster  divines,  in  their  Con- 
fession of  Faith,  declared  that  God  in  the  beginning,  by  the 
word  of  His  power,  made  of  nothing  the  world  and  all  things 
therein,  for  Himself,  for  the  manifestation  of  the  glory  of  His 
eternal  power,  wisdom,  and  goodness.  And  Jonathan  Ed- 
wards, in  his  profound  "  Dissertation  concerning  the  End  for 
which  God  created  the  World,"  argued  elaborately  from  rea- 
son and  Scripture,  that  the  divine  glory,  the  manifestation  of 
the  divine  perfections,  must  have  been  the  motive  of  the 
Creator,  rather  than  the  mere  holiness  or  happiness  of  His 
creatures.  It  was  too  soon  as  yet,  perhaps,  to  complement 
such  a  doctrine  intelligently  with  that  Copernican  or  helio- 
centric theory  of  the  heavens  which  placed  man  upon  a  planet, 
as  but  an  insignificant  part  of  the  creation,  with  countless 
worlds  around  him  illustrating  the  glory  of  the  Creator. 

As  "to  the  doctrine  of  angels,  there  was  not  in  all  respects 
such  full  accordance,  Roman  divines  continued  to  accept  the 
patristic  and  scholastic  definitions.  The  Nicene  fathers,  such 
as  Basil,  Ambrose,  and  Gregory,  had  ascribed  to  the  angels  a 
certain  corporeity  composed  of  ether  or  light,  in  accordance 
with  their  dazzling  appearance  as  depicted  in  the  Scriptures, 
and  had  referred  them  to  the  invisible  world  in  distinction 
from  that  which  is  visible  and  earthly,     St,  Augustine  had 


CHAP.  III.]  Biblical  Astronomy.  1 13 

taught  that  angels  were  the  light  created  before  all  other 
creatures,  having  no  superior  but  God,  as  men  have  none  in- 
ferior but  animals.  The  Council  of  the  Lateran  defined  three 
classes  of  creatures,  successively  made  in  the  beginning,  first 
the  spiritual  or  angelic,  then  the  corporeal  or  earthly,  and 
afterwards  the  human,  composed  of  both  body  and  soul. 
Gregory  the  Great,  accepting  the  "Celestial  Hierarchy"  of 
Dionysius,  which  embraced  three  great  orders,  with  three 
classes  in  each  order,  entitled  them  Angels,  Archangels, 
Virtues ;  Powers,  Principalities,  Dominations ;  Thrones,  Cher- 
ubim, and  Seraphim ;  and  likened  them  to  the  nine  precious 
stones  of  paradise  mentioned  in  Ezekiel.  Peter  Lombard,  in 
his  "  Sentences,"  identified  the  creation  of  the  heavens  as  the 
creation  of  angels,  who  were  prior  and  superior  to  the  whole 
material  or  earthly  creation,  and  assigned  them  their  place  of 
abode  above  the  visible  firmament.  Aquinas  also  character- 
ized them  as  pure  intelligences  or  intellectual  substances  not 
united  to  bodies,  and  indulged  in  subtle  disquisitions  upon  the 
locality  and  scenery  of  heaven  and  hell,  which  he  referred  re- 
spectively to  the  upper  and  nether  hemispheres ;  assigning  to 
the  constellation  of  the  Little  Carriage,  or  Great  Bear  as  it  is 
now  termed,  the  marvellous  function  of  transporting  the  souls 
of  baptized  infants  to  paradise,  unless  the  rite  had  been  imper- 
fectly administered,  when  one  of  the  wheels  would  break  and 
the  hapless  spirit  fall  into  purgatory.  The  great  Catholic 
poet  Dante,  in  his  "  Divina  Comedia,"  simply  illustrated  the 
affinity  of  this  celestial  hierarchy  with  the  Ptolemaic  system 
by  depicting  the  different  orders  of  saints  and  angels  in  con- 
centric zones,  ascending  through  the  planets  toward  the  em- 
pyrean, or  abode  of  the  Virgin  and  Holy  Trinity,  with  corres- 
ponding orders  of  lost  spirits  and  demons  descending  into  the 
under  world.  And  the  same  dogmas  substantially  were  de- 
creed by  the  Council  of  Trent  at  the  Reformation,  and  vindi- 
cated by  Bellarmine  and  Bossuet. 

Protestant  divines,  except  as  respects  the  worship  and 
mediation  of  angels,  which  they  rejected,  were  less  precise  in 
their  opinions.  Not  only  was  the  existence  of  purgatory  both 
as  a  place  and  a  state  denied,  but  the  material  sccncr)'-  and 
garniture  of  heaven  and  hell,  in  relation  to  the  earth,  were  but 


114  The  Scliisvi  in  Astronojny.  [part  i. 

vaguely  apprehended,  and  seldom  blended  with  astronomical 
conceptions.  There  was  simply  a  general  agreement  as  to  the 
spiritual  nature,  the  immense  number  and  the  varied  ranks  of 
the  angelic  host,  and  their  priority  to  man  in  the  creation;  and 
they  were' locally  distributed,  in  accordance  with  the  Ptolemaic 
system,  in  vague  regions  above  and  beneath,  evil  angels  being 
confined  in  a  bottomless  abyss  amid  utter  darkness,  whilst  good 
angels  remained  entranced  before  the  throne  of  God  in  the 
third,  or  highest  heaven,  over  the  blue  atmosphere  and  the 
starry  firmament,  except  as  either  class  occasionally  visited 
the  earth  on  errands  of  mercy  or  malice.  The  great  Puritan 
poet  Milton,  in  his  "  Paradise  Lost  and  Regained,"  consistently 
with  the  existing  state  of  astronomical  knowledge,  adhered  to 
the  geocentric  and  anthropocentric  view  of  creation,  by  placing 
the  earth,  with  tributary  sun  and  planets,  on  the  verge  of 
chaos,  midway  heaven  and  hell,  and  representing  man  as  the 
prize  in  a  conflict  of  the  supernal  and  infernal  hosts,  led  by 
Christ  and  Satan.  And  probably,  in  the  absence  of  more  defi- 
nite confessional  statements,  these  were  the  prevailing  opinions 
concerning  the  relation  of  the  angelic  races  to  the  astronomi- 
cal universe. 

As  to  the  new  heavens  and  earth  predicted  in  Scripture, 
there  was  a  general  agreement  of  all  Christian  divines  with 
traditionary  teachings,  scholastic,  patristic,  and  rabbinical. 
Even  heathen  sages,  who  may  be  supposed  to  have  shared  in 
this  primitive  revelation,  such  as  the  Chaldeans  and  Egyptians, 
had  anticipated  a  final  conflagration  and  renewal  of  the  world 
at  the  time  of  a  great  conjunction  of  the  planets  in  the  constella- 
tion Cancer,  to  which  sign  of  the  zodiac  it  was  supposed  they 
would  return,  after  revolving  through  the  Annus  Magnus,  or 
Great  Year,  now  known  as  the  precession  of  the  equinoxes. 
The  Jewish  rabbins,  without  any  such  a.strological  conception 
of  the  doctrine,  have  understood  the  prophetical  descriptions 
of  Isaiah  and  Ezekiel,  as  to  the  waxing  old  and  passing 
away  of  the  heavens  and  earth,  to  portend  not  merely  the 
downfall  of  empires  and  nations,  but  an  igneous  destruction 
of  the  whole  material  creation,  to  which  Philo  added  the  ideas 
of  its  purification  and  restitution,  though  without  admitting 
the  office  of  fire  in  the  process.     The  Greek  fathers,  such  as 


CHAP.  III.]  Biblical  Astronomy.  Ii^ 

Clement,  Origen,  and  Basil,  in  a  somewhat  rhetorical  manner, 
associated  the  general  conflagration,  predicted  by  St.  Peter, 
with  the  final  judgment  and  new  heavens  and  earth;  attribut- 
ing to  its  flames  a  renovating  as  well  as  punitive  agency,  a 
sort  of  purging  of  the  whole  material  system  from  the  dross 
of  sin ;  whilst  the  Latin  fathers,  such  as  Augustine  and  Gre- 
gory the  Great,  by  reserving  the  purifying  fires  in  the  under- 
world of  Hades  during  the  intermediate  state  until  they  should 
burst  forth  in  the  day  of  perdition,  prepared  the  way  for  the 
dogma  of  purgatory.  Aquinas,  and  the  schoolmen  generally, 
dwelt  with  theological  subtlety  upon  the  terrific  imagery  of 
the  Scriptures  respecting  the  end  of  the  world,  such  as  the 
darkening  of  the  sun  and  moon ;  the  falling  of  the  stars ;  the 
sudden  descent  of  the  Son  of  Man  in  effulgent  glory,  with  the 
whole  angelic  host  surrounding  Him,  bearing  His  cross  be- 
fore Him,  and  blowing  the.  trump  of  resurrection;  the  con- 
course of  the  dead  rising  from  their  graves  to  meet  Him  in 
the  air;  the  judgment  and  destruction  of  the  wicked  amid  the 
flames  of  dissolving  nature,  and  the  triumphal  ascent  of  the 
righteous  through  the  angelic  ranks  into  the  highest  heavens. 
Paintings  by  the  great  masters,  portraying  the  terrors  of  the 
last  day,  and  hymns  of  the  judgment,  such  as  the  "Dies  Irse," 
full  of  the  wildest  pathos,  were  but  the  artistic  expressions  of 
a  dogmatic  creed  which  pervaded  the  whole  mediaeval  culture; 
and  any  unusual  appearance  in  the  heavens,  such  as  a  comet 
or  meteoric  shower,  was  enough  to  kindle  the  popular  fore- 
boding into  dismay  and  panic,  though  as  yet  there  could  be 
no  definite  scientific  conception  of  an  astronomical  catastrophe. 
Protestant  theologians- retained  the  same  opinions,  without 
the  notion  of  purgatorial  fires.  Some  of  them,  indeed,  as 
Quenstedt,  defined  the  consummation  of  the  world  as  an  act 
of  God  by  which  the  whole  material  universe,  and  all  that  it 
contains,  except  angels  and  men,  is  to  be  totally  annihilated 
by  fire,  for  the  deliverance  of  the  saints  and  the  glory  of  the 
divine  power  and  justice.  Gerhard,  without  defending  such  a 
doctrine  as  an  article  of  faith,  or  claiming  for  it  the  authority 
of  the  fathers,  held  it  to  be  exactly  conformed  to  the  words 
of  Scripture,  and  preferred  to  await  the  event  itself  without 
determining  more  precisely  its  character.    Other  divines,  how- 


Ii6  The  Schisjn  in  Astronomy.  [part  i. 

ever,  were  not  only  inclined  to  restrict  the  catastrophe  to  a 
portion  of  the  creation,  to  our  own  region  of  the  astronomical 
heavens,  the  solar  system  or  the  earth  and  its  atmospheric 
firmament,  but  regarded  it,  moreover,  as  involving  a  restora- 
tion or  reconstruction  of  the  world,  an  alteration  of  qualities 
and  not  an  abolition  of  substance,  the  resurgence  of  the  new 
heavens  and  earth,  phoenix-like,  from  the  ashes  of  the  old  ex- 
tinguished creation.  The  heavens  now  wear  their  work- 
day clothes,  but  will  then  put  on  their  Sunday  garb,  said 
Luther,  in  obvious  allusion  to  the  Psalmist's  prediction,  that 
they  shall  wax  old  as  a  garment  and  as  a  vesture  shall  be 
changed.  Calvin,  commenting  upon  St.  Peter,  insisted  that 
the  heavens  and  earth  are  to  be  purged  by  fire,  that  they  may 
correspond  with  the  kingdom  of  Christ,  consumed  only  that 
they  may  be  renovated,  their  substance  still  remaining  the 
same.  Turrettin,  in  one  of  his  chapters,  vindicates  the  same 
doctrine,  with  copious  proofs  from  the  Scriptures,  the  fathers, 
and  even  heathen  writers.  Millenarian  divines,  especially  in 
times  of  political  commotion,  as  during  the  English  revolution, 
represented  the  destruction  of  the  world  as  hourly  impending 
in  connection  with  the  Second  Advent  of  Christ.  And  these 
opinions,  as  everywhere  expressed  in  sermons  and  hymns, 
when  not  pushed  to  a  fanatical  extreme,  could  not  fail  to  pro- 
duce a  salutary  impression  of  the  transitory  nature  of  all  visi- 
ble things.  It  will  be  remembered  that  astronomy  had  not 
yet  advanced  to  the  point  where  it  could  suggest  the  re- 
markable agreement  of  such  predicted  moral  events  with  cos- 
mical  phenomena  and  tendencies,  and  they  were,  therefore, 
anticipated  as  mere  celestial  pageants  or  miraculous  catastro- 
phes from  a  geocentric  point  of  view. 
(^  At  length,  in  our  day,  has  been  reached  the  third  and  final 
stage  of  perfect  indifference,  where  the  whole  scientific  as- 
tronomy is  openly  repudiated  as  of  no  scriptural  warrant  or 
even  dogmatic  interest.  Whilst  some  well-informed  divines 
may  exclude  astronomical  conceptions,  under  a  feeling  of 
theological  or  clerical  propriety,  others  either  admit  frankly 
that  the  Chaldaic  or  Ptolemaic  system  is  Scriptural,  or  deny 
that  the  Copernican  system  is  essential  to  a  complete  doctrine 
of  the  heavens.     Cardinal  Baronius  thus  met  the  new  astron- 


CHAP.  III.]  Biblical  Astronomy,  WJ 

omy  with  the  extraordinary  statement,  that  it  was  the  inten- 
tion of  Holy  Scripture  to  teach  how  to  go  to  heaven,  and  not 
how  heaven  goes.  Calvin,  also,  as  an  avowed  Ptolemaist, 
only  enunciated  the  narrow  geocentric  principle  upon  which 
many  modern  interpreters  still  proceed,  when  he  insisted  that 
Moses,  speaking  by  the  Holy  Spirit,  did  not  treat  of  the 
heavenly  luminaries  as  an  astronomer,  but  as  it  became  a 
theologian,  having  regard  to  us  rather  than  to  the  stars.  The 
elder  Rosenmuller,  in  his  "  Most  Ancient  History  of  the  Earth," 
declared  it  an  absurdity  to  require  that  inspired  prophets 
should  have  spoken  in  accordance  with  the  philosophy  of 
Newton.  Knapp,  in  his  "Christian  Theology,"  maintains 
that  the  Mosaic  history  of  creation  can  neither  be  made  to 
confirm  nor  to  contradict  the  systems  of  Descartes,  Buffon 
and  Bergmann,  and  that  every  attempt  to  draw  arguments 
from  it  either  for  or  against  any  of  them,  is  but  labor  thrown 
away.  Professor  Tayler  Lewis,  annotating  Lange's  Com- 
mentary, suggests  that  the  tendency  to  treat  the  Bible  heavens 
as  the  astronomical  heavens,  attributes  to  Moses  too  much 
science,  or  makes  him  a  mere  automatic  medium  of  inspiration. 
Dr.  Murphy  of  Belfast,  in  his  "  Genesis,"  whilst  admitting 
the  wonderful  astronomy  of  the  modern  and  western  nations, 
insists  that  the  only  cosmos  of  which  Moses  was  inspired  to 
speak,  was  the  sky  and  land  of  eastern  Asia,  as  adapted  to 
the  little  Jewish  theocracy  which  was  there  to  be  founded. 
And  acting  upon  these  principles,  without  avowing  them, 
great  biblical  scholars  such  as  Hengstenberg,  Tholuck  and 
Alexander,  living  amidst  the  magnificent  celestial  discoveries 
of  Herschel,  Bessel  and  .Arago,  have  descanted  upon  the  as- 
tronomical psalms  in  the  spirit  of  an  ancient  Hebrew  peasant, 
as  if  the  heavens  declared  no  other  glory  than  a  spangled 
vault,  and  the  firmament  showed  no  higher  handiwork  than  a 
gorgeous  canopy. 

And  thus  astronomy,  under  the  indifferent  spirit,  instead  of 
soaring  toward  God  through  the  highest  heavens,  would 
either  grovel  beneath  the  narrow  sky  of  our  earth  with  Chal- 
dean seers  and  Jewish  rabbins,  or  grope  after  heathen  sages 
among  the  fortuitous  atoms  of  Epicurus  into  the  godless  void 
of  Lucretius.  q 


1 1 8  The  Schism  in  Geology.  [part  i. 

The  Schism  in  Geology. 

In  geology,  likewise,  a  similar  separation  of  revealed  and 
rational  truth  has  proceeded  on  both  sides,  through  like  stages 
of  growing  indifference. 

On  the  rational  side  of  the  science  there  have  been  succes- 
sive departures  from  the  revealed  doctrine  of  the  earth.  The 
first  and  legitimate  stage  was  that  of  expelling  the  false  bibli- 
cal geology  of  the  schoolmen  and  divines.  It  was  the  time 
when  bold  navigators  were  sailing  beyond  the  Christian 
geography  of  Cosmas,  brave  physicists  were  exorcising  the 
long-forbidden  alchemy,  and  the  fossils  of  the  museum 
were  refuting  the  cosmogonies  of  the  cloister.  The  practi- 
cal geographers,  Marco  Polo,  Columbus,  De  Gama,  and 
Magellan,  in  spite  of  the  anathemas  of  the  church,  had  proved 
the  vast  extent  and  globular  form  of  the  earth.  Boccaccio,  the 
great  Italian  poet,  at  the  very  dawn  of  letters,  in  one  of  his 
romances,  had  taken  the  first  step  in  palaeontology,  by  describ- 
ing the  fossil  shells  in  his  native  Tuscan  hills  as  relics  of  a 
former  sea,  when  as  yet  the  Church  was  still  defending  them 
as  mere  illusory  archetypes  of  the  Creator,  or  sports  of  nature. 
John  Baptist  Porta,  the  Medici,  and  other  Florentine  acade- 
micians, under  the  ban  of  the  church,  led  the  way  in  the  geo- 
logical sciences  of  meteorology,  physics,  chemistry,  botany, 
and  mineralogy.  Leonardo  Da  Vinci,  who  had  been  an 
engineer  before  he  became  a  painter,  and  had  discovered 
various  organic  remains  whilst  excavating  a  canal  in  Northern 
Italy,  ridiculed  the  scholastic  conceit  that  they  could  have 
been  produced,  together  with  accompanying  pebbles  and  sea- 
weeds, by  some  mysterious  action  of  the  stars.  Fracastoro, 
the  celebrated  poet-physician  of  Verona,  early  in  the  sixteenth 
century,  three  hundred  years  ahead  of  his  time,  boldly  assailed 
the  traditional  dogma,  that  the  petrified  shells  of  the  Appe- 
nines  had  been  carried  thither  by  the  Mosaic  deluge,  which  he 
maintained  was  too  transient  to  have  buried  the  productions 
of  the  sea  so  deep  in  the  mountains.  Conrad  Gesner,  sur- 
named  the  Pliny  of  Germany,  included  among  his  voluminous 
works  a  treatise  on  "Fossil  Objects,"  which  he  delineated  ac- 
cording to  their  figures   and  species,  but  without   deciding 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Geology.  up 

whether  they  were  animal  remains  or  mineral  products,  as 
the  learned  were  then  maintaining.  Bernard  Palissy,  a  worthy 
forerunner  of  Cuvier,  who  collected  the  first  cabinet  of  Natural 
history  at  Paris,  and  endeavored  prematurely  to  connect 
chemistry  with  mineralogy,  not  only  recognized  the  animality 
of  fossil  shells,  but  argued  from  their  delicate  and  fragile 
structure  that  they  could  not  have  been  transported  by  rough 
seas,  but  must  have  lived  and  died  in  the  hills  where  they  are 
found.  Fabio  Colonna,  an  eminent  botanist,  in  his  treatise  on 
"  Glossopetrae,"  the  name  of  certain  gems  resembling  the 
human  tongue,  carefully  discriminated  the  external  marks  of 
fossils  and  the  living  species  to  which  they  had  belonged, 
whilst  the  great  naturalists  of  his  time  were  still  collecting 
them  in  the  Vatican  cabinet  as  mere  curious  petrifactions,  or 
mineral  growths,  or  volcanic  excretions,  or  aqueous  deposits, 
or  other  anomalous  formations.  Nicolaus  Stenon  of  Copen- 
hagen, naturalized  as  a  medical  professor  at  Padua,  published 
a  work  on  the  Contents  of  Solid  Rocks,  in  which  he  demon- 
strated the  organic  nature  of  certain  Italian  fossils  by  classing 
them  with  living  Mediterranean  shells,  and  also  traced  the 
different  stages  of  fossilization  from  the  empty  mould  to 
the  petrified  animal.  Robert  Hooke  of  the  Isle  of  Wight,  the 
distinguished  rival  of  Newton,  as  appears  from  his  posthu- 
mous works,  not  only  maintained  that  the  figured  stones  were 
real  organisms  or  their  mouldings  left  in  rock,  but  also  sug- 
gested that  some  of  them  had  belonged  to  extinct  species,  and 
even  characterized  them  as  ancient  medals  of  nature,  out  of 
which  it  might  not  be  impossible  to  construct  a  chronometry 
of  the  earth.  William  Woodward,  founder  of  the  geological 
chair  and  museum  at  Cambridge,  which  still  bear  his  name, 
early  in  the  eighteenth  century,  broached  the  principle  of 
stratification,  by  arranging  the  stones  of  Britain  in  horizontal 
layers,  the  like  of  which,  he  predicted,  would  be  found  on  the 
continent  and  even  in  remote  countries.  The  learned  Profes- 
sor Vallisneri,  author  of  the  first  complete  sketch  of  the  Italian 
strata  and  fossils,  besides  refuting  the  grotesque  cosmogonies 
of  the  Cambridge  divines  as  to  their  diluvian  origin,  protested 
against  the  dogma  of  St.  Jerome  that  the  disordered  state  of 
the  earth's  crust  exhibited  the  wrath  of  God  for  the  sins  of 


120  The  Schism  in  Geology.  [part  i. 

man,  and  proposed  to  explain  geological  phenomena  by 
natural  causes  without  violence  and  without  miracles.  Count 
Marsigli,  a  distinguished  geographical  explorer,  and  Vitalien 
Donati,  the  celebrated  naturalist,  after  separate  dredgings, 
published  physical  histories  of  the  Adriatic  sea,  in  which 
shells,  corals,  and  fishes,  both  fossil  and  living,  were  displayed 
in  genera  and  species  or,  as  the  latter  writer  quaintly  termed 
them,  in  legions,  cohorts,  and  centuries.  Lehman  in  the 
mines  of  Germany,  Arduino  among  the  volcanos  of  Italy, 
Demarest  in  the  hills  of  France,  Saussure  amid  the  glaciers 
of  the  Alps,  and  Pallas  upon  the  mountains  of  Siberia,  together 
share  the  honor  of  classifying  the  strata  according  to  relative 
age  and  position  as  primary,  secondary,  and  tertiary,  or 
ancient,  intermediate,  and  recent.  Baldisari  and  Soldani  com- 
pleted the  organic  scale  of  fossils  from  the  animalcule  to  the 
mastodon,  and  Gesner,  Brander,  and  Werner  had  already 
begun  to  arrange  them  in  the  successive  strata  as  connected 
mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal  systems.  William  Smith,  the 
father  of  English  geology,  a  civil  engineer  without  rank, 
wealth,  or  scientific  correspondence,  then  completed  the  un- 
known labors  of  his  predecessors  by  surveying  the  fossil  beds 
of  all  England,  and  tabulating  them  in  his  work  entitled  "  The 
British  Strata  identified  by  Organic  Remains."  Baron  Cuvier, 
the  great  French  naturalist  and  father  of  palaeontology,  at  the 
close  of  the  last  century,  having  distinguished  the  fossil  from 
the  Indian  elephant,  after  twenty-five  years  of  extraordinary 
labor,  published  his  great  treatise  on  the  "  Organic  Kemains 
in  the  Vicinity  of  Paris,"  in  which  the  most  gigantic  crea- 
tures, like  fabled  monsters  of  the  land  and  sea,  re-appeared 
in  complete  skeleton  and  form  as  by  some  magical  resurrec- 
tion. Adolf  Brogniart,  the  worthy  collaborator  of  Cuvier,  in 
his  "  History  of  Fossil  Vegetables,"  in  like  manner  restored 
the  huge  flora  of  the  ancient  world,  with  general  views  of  the 
contemporaneous  climate  and  scenery,  like  glimpses  of  fairy 
land.  D'Orbigny,  Pictet,  Von  Buch,  and  Phillips  descended 
still  deeper  through  the  catacombs  of  nature,  from  one  extinct 
dynasty  to  another,  till  they  reached  in  the  metamorphosed 
rocks  the  very  dust  of  buried  worlds  as  remote  in  time  as  are 
the    nebulous    stars    in    space.     At   length    Carl    Rittcr,    the 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Geology.  I2I 

founder  of  physical  geography,  in  his  magnificent  work,  "The 
Science  of  the  Globe,"  treating  the  earth  as  a  star  among  the 
stars,  traced  its  forming  continents  and  seas  as  the  destined 
theatre  of  human  races  and  civilizations.  And  a  host  of  other 
eager  explorers,  such  as  Murchison,  Dawson,  Guyot,  Geikie 
and  Marsh  are  still  at  work  upon  the  problem  of  its  past  pre- 
sent and  future  development  as  an  organism  moulded  by 
mechanical,  chemical,  and  vital  laws. 

Meanwhile,  however,  in  the  next  stage  of  avoidance,  a  mere 
speculative  geology  was  steadily  ignoring  that  true  biblical 
geology  which  had  not  yet  been  affected.  In  place  of  the 
doctrines  of  the  creative  Spirit,  the  six  days'  work  and  the 
new  earth,  arose  various  hypotheses  as  to  the  formation,  the 
periods,  and  the  destiny  of  the  globe.  As  to  its  formation, 
there  were  the  two  rival  schools  of  Neptunists  and  Vulcan- 
ists.  According  to  the  Neptunists,  the  crust  of  the  earth  was 
formed  through  the  agency  of  water.  It  had  been  taught  in 
the  Church,  from  the  time  of  Augustine  and  Tertullian,  that 
this  element  prevailed  at  the  creation  as  well  as  at  the  deluge. 
Colonna,  Steno  and  Scilla,  having  accepted  the  traditionary 
cosmogony,  could  only  regard  fossils  and  strata  as  mere  drift 
and  sediment  of  a  great  inundation  which  had  issued,  it  was 
generally  believed,  from  subterranean  fountains,  formed  when 
the  sea  was  divided  from  the  land  and  drained  into  a  central 
abyss.  Woodward,  also,  on  the  same  theory,  published  a 
Natural  History  of  the  Earth,  in  which  he  conceived  the 
whole  terrestrial  globe  to  have  been  dissolved  at  the  flood, 
and  the  strata  to  have  settled  down  as  mere  earthy  sediment, 
together  with  the  fossils,  the  heavier  shells  in  stone,  the 
lighter  in  chalk,  according  to  the  order  of  gravity.  Vallisneri, 
however,  without  referring  to  the  miraculous  event  of  the 
deluge  and  insisting  only  upon  natural  causes  of  geological 
change,  inferred  from  the  continuous  layers  of  rocks  through- 
out Italy,  that  they  must  have  been  deposited  by  the  gradual 
subsidence  of  a  universal  ocean.  Werner,  the  founder  of  the 
great  school  of  mines  at  Freyburg,  carried  Neptunism  to  an 
extreme  by  his  theory,  that  the  primitive  earth  had  been  en- 
veloped in  a  chaotic  fluid,  precipitating  successively  over  the 
whole  globe  the  three  formations  of  granite,  slate  and 
Q 


122  TJic  Schism  hi  Geology.  [part  i. 

clay,  which  he  found  in  the  httle  province  of  Saxony,  and 
which  he  even  fancied  must  have  predetermined  the  course  of 
civihzation,  according  as  one  or  the  other  became  prominent 
in  different  regions,  along  the  banks  of  the  Nile,  on  the 
steppes  of  Tartary  and  amid  the  mountains  of  Switzerland. 
Cuvier,  in  his  "Theory  of  the  Earth,"  endeavored  to  explain 
the  deposition  of  the  strata  by  imagining  a  series  of  cataclysms 
or  irruptions  of  the  sea  upon  the  land,  produced  by  unknown 
causes,  and  leaving  behind  them  successive  beds  of  fossils  as 
the  remains  of  former  animal  kingdoms.  Dr.  Daubeny  as- 
cribed even  the  phenomena  of  volcanic  eruptions  and  earth- 
quakes to  the  action  of  water  rushing  underground  from 
neighboring  seas,  and  chemically  combining  with  metallic 
masses  in  the  caverns  of  the  earth.  Professor  Agassiz,  rea- 
soning from  the  same  element  in  its  frozen  form,  as  investi- 
gated by  Charpentier  and  Guyot,  has  offered  the  ingenious 
conjecture,  in  his  "  Studies  of  Glaciers,"  that  whole  continents 
were  once  covered  with  sheets  of  ice,  not  the  motionless  tor- 
rents which  Coleridge  fancied  he  beheld  in  the  Alps,  but  vast 
avalanches,  scouring  through  deep  gorges  over  distant  plains, 
and  strewing  enormous  boulders  in  their  course.  And  ex- 
travagant as  such  opinions  may  appear,  they  have  left  a  resi- 
duum of  truth  in  abundant  evidences  of  former  revolutions 
effected  by  v/atcr,  at  least  in  the  superficial  strata,  such  as 
glacial  drift,  marine  remains,  alluvial  soils,  and.  indeed,  the 
whole  mass  of  fossiliferous  rocks,  which  are  generally  con- 
ceded to  be  largely  composed  of  aqueous  formations. 

According  to  the  Vulcanists,  the  crust  of  the  earth  was 
formed  by  the  agency  of  fire.  It  had  been  held  by  some  of 
the  Greek  philosophers  that  the  world  originated  in  that  ele- 
ment, and  the  younger  Pliny  had  referred  to  earthquakes  and 
volcanoes  as  evidences  of  vast  igneous  forces  imprisoned,  like 
smothered  embers  or  cavernous  furnaces,  in  the  earth.  Robert 
Hooke,  recurring  to  these  ancient  opinions  in  a  Discourse  on 
Earthquakes,  explained  by  them  the  catastrophe  of  Sodom 
and  Gomorrah,  and  even  the  Deluge  itself,  which  he  attri- 
buted to  subterranean  action,  forming  mountains  into  plains 
and  plains  into  mountains,  land  into  seas  and  seas  into  land, 
and  thus  exposing  shells  and  bones  upon  the  highest  Alps 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Geology.  123 

and  Appenines,  where,  with  much  astonishment,  we  find 
them.  James  Ray  followed  Hooke  with  an  essay  on  "  Chaos 
and  Creation,"  in  which  he  ascribed  to  similar  agencies,  opera- 
ting as  second  causes  in  the  crust  of  the  earth,  the  original 
emergence  of  the  dry  land  and  subsidence  of  the  sea,  described 
in  Genesis.  Leibnitz,  however,  without  reconciling  such 
speculations  with  the  Mosaic  cosmogony,  declining,  indeed, 
to  press  them  to  their  consequences,  published  in  the  begin- 
ning of  the  eighteenth  century  a  treatise  styled  "Protogea," 
or  the  Primitive  Earth,  in  which  he  described  our  planet  as 
an  extinguished  sun,  having  been  originally  an  igneous  globe, 
which  had  cooled  and  condensed  through  successive  stages  of 
vapor,  water,  and  rock  into  its  present  stratified  form.  The 
great  French  naturalist,  Buffon,  incurred  the  censure  of  the 
Sorbonne  for  a  similar  "  Theory  of  the  Earth,"  according  to 
which  our  world  was  represented  as  a  blazing  fragment  of  the 
sun,  struck  off  by  a  comet,  and  left  to  whirl  and  cool  for  ages, 
forming  its  present  valleys  and  mountains  by  combined  aque- 
ous and  volcanic  action.  James  Hutton,  the  celebrated  Scotch 
geologist,  usually  called  the  founder  of  the  Vulcanic  or  Plu- 
tonian school,  in  his  "Theory  of  the  Earth,"  characterized  the 
globe  as  a  rocky  shell,  periodically  rent  and  fused  by  internal 
fire  operating  through  indefinite  ages.  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  in 
his  "Manual  of  Geology,"  has  employed  the  principles  of 
Hutton  to  explaifi  and  classify  certain  rocks,  lava,  granite  and 
slate  as  volcanic,  plutonic  and  metamorphic,  according  as 
they  have  been  erupted  upon  the  outside  of  the  earth,  or  fused 
and  compacted  within  the  earth,  or  transformed  out  of  old 
aqueous  deposits  into  new  igneous  compounds,  the  latter  class 
including  even  former  portions  of  the  fossiliferous  strata. 
Dr.  Mantell  also,  in  his  "  Wonders  of  Geology,"  has  grouped 
together  such  volcanic  ejections,  granite  peaks  and  abysmal 
fissures,  with  hot  springs,  new  islands,  water-spouts  and  other 
marine  phenomena,  as  but  connected  expressions  of  the  same 
terrestrial  force,  due  alike  to  the  reaction  of  the  interior  heat 
of  the  globe  upon  its  exterior  surface.  Saussure,  Daniell, 
Marcet,  De  la  Rive  and  Reich  and  other  thermometricians, 
after  careful  measurements  in  mines,  springs  and  artesian  wells, 
announced  the  general  conclusion  that  the  temperature  of  the 


124  ^^^^'  Schism  in  Geology.  [part  i. 

earth  increases  as  we  descend,  at  the  rate  of  about  one  degree 
for  every  fifty  feet ;  so  rapidly,  indeed,  that  at  the  centre  the 
hardest  rocks  and  metals  would  be  melted  in  an  instant.  At 
length  Humboldt,  in  his  "Cosmos,"  combining  these  various 
geological  data  with  the  astronomical  speculations  of  La 
Place  and  Herschel,  has  described  our  planet  as  one  of  the 
nebular  rings  of  the  primitive  solar  system,  which  has  ag- 
glomerated into  an  incandescent  sphere,  and  then  hardened 
into  a  granite  shell,  to  serve  as  the  primordial  base  of  the 
whole  subsequent  edifice  of  mineral  and  organic  systems 
which  have  successively  flourished  and  decayed  upon  its  surface. 
And  daring  as  such  hypotheses  may  seem,  they  rest  not  only 
upon  numerous  signs  of  the  present  agency  of  fire  in  the  ter- 
restrial economy,  but  upon  the  admitted  fact  that  the  great 
solid  masses  of  the  planet  are  igneous  formations. 

As  to  the  development  or  periods  of  the  globe,  there  were 
also  two  parties, — the  catastrophists  and  the  uniformitarians. 
According  to  the  catastrophists,  ancient  processes  in  the  earth 
were  rapid  and  violent.  It  had  long  been  the  faith  of  the 
Church  that  the  world  was  fashioned  out  of  chaos  in  six  days, 
and  afterwards  totally  destroyed  by  the  Deluge  in  a  few  weeks. 
And  some  of  the  early  geologists,  proceeding  upon  this  dogma 
as  a  scientific  hypothesis,  could  only  ascribe  to  aqueous  and 
igneous  causes  in  former  times  an  operation  almost  miracu- 
lous, if  not  monstrous.  Woodward,  as  we  have  seen,  reason- 
ing as  a  neptunist,  had  actually  represented  .the  entire  crust  of 
the  globe  as  having  been  dissolved  and  stratified,  with  all  its 
serried  fossils,  in  the  space  of  a  few  months.  Hooke  also,  rea- 
soning as  a  vulcanist,  had  not  only  endeavored  to  explain  the 
phenomena  of  the  Deluge  by  means  of  earthquakes,  but  also 
the  extinction  of  fossil  flora  and  fauna  in  the  areas  which  they 
had  convulsed,  and  even  the  general  configuration  of  the 
globe,  including  a  sudden  upheaval  of  the  Alps  and  Andes,  in 
a  few  months,  since  which  great  crisis  of  nature  their  action 
had  become  languid  and  quiescent.  Ray,  Whiston,  and  Bur- 
net, with  other  Scripture  geologists,  endeavored  to  explain  the 
disordered  strata  and  irregular  climate  of  the  globe  by  a  sup- 
posed distortion  of  the  paradisaic  earth  from  an  upright  to  its 
present  oblique  axis,  or  by  the  sun's  fays  fissuring  its  crust 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Geology.  125 

and  flooding  it  with  the  central  waters  in  time  of  the  Deluge, 
or  by  the  successive  shocks  of  comets,  and  other  such 
planetary  convulsions.  Cuvier,  besides  ascribing  the  aqueous 
rocks  to  successive  deluges,  characterized  those  events  as 
sudden  and  terrible  catastrophes,  which  at  ancient  epochs  had 
desolated  the  entire  surface  of  the  globe,  and  for  which  no 
adequate  cause  can  now  be  found,  either  in  the  earth  itself  or 
in  its  astronomical  changes,  which  were  too  gradual  to  have 
buried  tropical  animals  at  the  poles.  Sir  Humphrey  Davy 
also,  in  avowed  opposition  to  the  doctrine  that  the  present  is 
the  ancient  and  constant  order  of  nature,  maintained  that  the 
fossiliferous  strata  themselves  indicate  a  succession  of  destruc- 
tions and  creations,  preparatory  to  the  appearance  of  man. 
The  distinguished  geologist,  Elie  de  Beaumont,  attributed  the 
igneous  rocks,  expressed  in  parallel  mountain  chains,  to  suc- 
cessive earthquakes  or  frightful  convulsions,  which  after  long 
periods  of  comparative  repose  had  instantaneously  burst 
through  the  sedimentary  strata  with  protruding  masses  from 
beneath,  and  had  probably  been  caused  by  the  cooling  of  the 
heated  contents  of  the  planet,  rather  than  by  any  ordinary  vol- 
canic action.  Humboldt,  after  describing  both  the  aqueous 
and  igneous  rocks  which  are  now  visibly  forming,  such  as 
alluvium  and  lava,  remarks  that  they  are  but  a  faint  reflection 
of  that  more  energetic  activity  which  must  have  characterized 
the  early  globe,  when  its  molten  nucleus  and  vaporous 
atmosphere  were  in  constant  communication  through  the  vast 
fissures  which  had  not  yet  been  closed  by  irrupted  mountain 
ridges,  nor  relapsed  into  abysmal  seas.  And  distant  and  un- 
familiar as  such  a  world  must  now  appear,  it  cannot  be  denied 
that  the  fossils  of  monster  plants  and  animals,  the  broken 
strata  and  distorted  surface  of  the  globe,  viewed  with  the  occa- 
sional freshet  and  the  smouldering  volcano,  are  very  sugges- 
tive of  spent  forces  which  may  once  have  operated  with 
paroxysmal  violence. 

According  to  the  uniformitarians,  however,  ancient  pro- 
cesses in  the  earth  were  even  and  tranquil.  It  had  been  the 
teaching  of  Greek  sages  that  the  world  from  eternity,  or  from 
an  indefinite  antiquity,  had  been  transformed  by  fire  and 
water;  and   Strabo,  the   great  geographer,  had  referred  the 


126  The  Schism  in  Geology.  [part  i. 

moulding  of  existing  continents  and  seas  to  volcanoes  and  in- 
undations, as  still  obvious  causes  which  were  of  daily  occur- 
rence. But  the  dogma  of  a  recent  creation  of  strata  had  be- 
come so  sacred  to  the  Western  mind,  that  it  was  only  after 
centuries  that  any  other  view  would  be  entertained  even  as  a 
scientific  hypothesis.  Vallisneri,  among  the  first,  rejected  the 
brief  deluge  of  Noah  as  too  miraculous  a  mode  of  stratification; 
substituting  for  it  the  sedimentary  action  of  ordinary  seas, 
which  had  slowly  retired  after  prevailing  for  a  long  time. 
Lazarro  Moro,  rejecting  the  catastrophic  miracles  of  Burnet 
and  Whiston,  endeavored  to  explain  the  original  formation  of 
continents  through  volcanic  action;  as  illustrated  in  a  new 
island-mountain  which  had  recently  emerged  in  the  Mediter- 
ranean, covered  with  shells,  fossils,  lava,  and  gradually  with 
vegetation.  And  his  enthusiastic  expositor,  Generelli,  not  only 
argued  that  such  phenomena  may  be  proceeding  imper- 
ceptibly on  a  large  scale  over  the  earth  during  a  lapse  of 
ages,  but  also  insisted  that  they  belonged  to  a  system  of 
waste  and  repair,  by  which  the  equilibrium  of  land  and  sea 
has  been  maintained  from  the  beginning.  Buffon,  having 
described  the  aqueous  and  igneous  forces  which  originally 
heaved  the  mountains  and  drained  the  valleys,  maintained 
that  the  same  causes  were  still  active,  and  would  gradually 
submerge  existing  continents  under  the  ocean,  and  reproduce 
others  like  those  we  now  inhabit.  Raspe,  known  more  gene- 
rally as  the  author  of  "  Baron  Munchausen's  Travels,"  pub- 
lished a  work  on  the  "  New  Islands  Born  of  the  Sea,"  in  which 
he  not  only  ascribed  the  production  of  continents  to  existing 
causes,  but  suggested  their  indefinite  duration,  the  secular 
changes  of  climate  and  species,  and  other  problems  of  modern 
geology.  Professor  James  Hutton,  the  founder  of  the  uni- 
formitarian  school,  boldly  declaring  that  in  the  economy  of 
the  world  he  could  find  no  traces  of  a  beginning  and  no  pro- 
spect of  an  end,  enunciated  the  principle  of  a  gradual  decay 
and  metamorphosis  of  rocks,  which  he  described  as  the  ruins 
of  former  worlds  successively  disintegrated  and  reproduced 
by  known  chemical  agencies  still  observable  in  the  deposit  of 
alluvium  and  the  formation  of  lava.  Geoffrey  St.  Hilaire, 
Lamarck,  and  other  naturalists,  as  we  shall  see,  broached  the 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Geology.  127 

cognate  principle  of  a  gradual  extinction  and  generation  of 
animal  species  by  transmutation  of  one  into  another,  rather 
than  by  successive  catastrophes  from  which  none  could  escape. 
Babbage,  in  view  of  the  co-action  of  climatic  and  organic 
forces,  referred  the  tropical  flora  and  fauna  of  the  primitive 
earth  to  the  excessive  radiation  of  its  internal  heat,  which  in 
former  epochs  had  converted  it  into  avast  hot-house,  but  with 
the  lapse  of  ages  had  been  checked  by  the  continued  forma- 
tion of  a  non-conducting  crust  of  interior  lava  and  exterior 
sediment.  Sir  John  Herschel  was  so  persuaded  that  geolo- 
gical revolutions  are  regular  and  not  convulsive,  that  he  sought 
to  explain  the  difference  between  ancient  and  modern  climates, 
which  geology  clearly  indicates,  by  astronomical  causes  acting 
imperceptibly  through  myriads  of  centuries,  such  as  the  gra- 
dual alteration  of  the  earth's  orbit  and  exposure,  and  even  a 
possible  fluctuation  of  heat  and  light  in  the  sun  itself,  after  the 
manner  of  the  variable  stars.  At  length  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  in 
his  masterly  work  on  the  "  Principles  of  Geology,"  bringing 
together  all  these  varied  phenomena  under  one  wide  induc- 
tion, has  referred  them  to  existing  terrestrial  causes,  both  in- 
ternal and  external,  which,  by  slowly  shifting  the  continents 
from  one  part  of  the  globe  to  another,  have  successively  pro- 
duced and  fossilized  the  various  floras  and  faunas  that  have 
flourished  and  decayed  over  the  earth  through  indefinite  time. 
And  if  it  be  held  that  such  apparent  catastrophes  as  floods 
and  earthquakes  are  but  incidental,  like  the  occasional  fall  of 
a  ruined  tower,  or  even  normal,(what  Raspe  termed  Nature  in 
the  act  of  parturition),  we  shall  certainly  find  much  in  the 
regular  succession  of  the  ancient  strata  and  fossils,  viewed  in 
connection  with  existing  climates  and  species  and  the  known 
rate  of  their  action,  which  might  suggest  a  steady  play  of 
forces  ever  operating  with  uniform  tranquillity. 

As  to  the  destiny  of  the  globe,  there  have  also  been  two 
corresponding  opinions.  Many  of  the  early  geologists  pre- 
dicted the  dissolution  of  the  earth.  It  had,  in  fact,  long  been 
a  sacred  tradition,  both  pagan  and  Christian,  that  the  world 
was  to  be  consumed  by  fire,  as  it  had  once  been  submerged 
with  water.  Plato,  in  his  Phaedon,  had  discoursed  sagely 
concerning  the  Pyrophlegethon,  or  infernal  lake  of  fire  which 


128  The  Schism  in  Geology.  [part  i. 

was  supposed  to  girdle  the  earth  and  at  times  overflow  it  with 
lava  streams  from  -^tna  and  Vesuvius ;  and  Pliny  had  been 
so  impressed  by  its  combustible  materials,  that  he  had  de- 
clared it  the  greatest  of  miracles  that  a  day  could  pass  without 
a  general  conflagration.  Hooke  and  Ray,  with  the  English 
geologists  of  their  time,  reasoning  from  the  prophecies  as 
postulates,  and  from  the  examples  of  Sodom  and  Gomorrah, 
speculated  upon  the  destructive  agency  of  earthquakes  and 
volcanoes  in  bringing  about  a  universal  catastrophe,  of  which 
the  buried  ruins  of  Herculaneum  and  Pompeii  and  the  pros- 
trate cities  of  Spain  and  Chili  were  but  the  premonitions,  and 
which  might  finally  inflame  the  heavens  as  well  as  the  earth. 
Leibnitz,  as  a  mere  scientific  cosmogonist,  retained  from  his 
primitive  globe  of  fire  a  volcanic  nucleus,  ever  and  anon  agi- 
tating its  rocky  shell  with  subterranean  tremors  and  bursting 
forth  in  floods  of  lava.  John  Mitchell  published,  in  1760,  an 
essay  on  the  "Causes  of  Earthquakes,"  in  which  he  seems  to 
have  revived  the  picturesque  theory  of  Ovid  concerning  the 
inflated  cone  of  Methone,  by  referring  the  wave-like  motion 
of  the  ground  to  imprisoned  air  forcing  itself  along,  as  in  the 
folds  of  a  carpet,  between  the  solid  strata  and  the  fluid  lava 
upon  which  large  districts  were  supposed  to  float.  And  more 
recently,  Professor  Rogers  of  Philadelphia  has  attributed  such 
terrific  land-tides  to  actual  pulsations  of  the  molten  matter 
itself,  under  enormous  tension,  exploding  in  volcanic  gases 
or  escaping  into  the  cavernous  spaces  beneath.  Cordier, 
Fourier  and  Humboldt,  on  the  basis  of  their  thermometrical 
researches,  described  our  planet  as  a  liquid  ball  of  glowing 
metals  and  lava,  steadily  cooling  and  shrinking  within  a  solid 
crust  relatively  no  thicker  than  an  egg-shell.  Sir  Humphrey 
Davy,  in  a  memoir  on  volcanoes,  threw  out  a  suggestion, 
based  upon  his  chemical  discoveries,  that  the  rapid  combus- 
tion of  the  primitive  globe  formed  an  oxidized  crust,  within 
which  remained  compacted  various  inflammable  metals,  need- 
ing only  contact  with  the  hydrogen  afforded  by  neighboring 
springs,  in  order  to  fuse  the  surrounding  rocks  into  such  a 
substance  as  lava ;  and  Dr.  Daubeny,  pursuing  this  conjecture, 
has  argued  from  the  weight  of  the  globe  and  the  prevalence 
of  volcanoes   in   its  maritime  regions,  that  its  vast  metallic 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Geology.  129 

contents  are  but  like  smothered  fuel,  ever  kindling  afresh  and 
exploding  in  jets  of  mud  and  fire.  Other  and  still  bolder 
theorists,  leaving  the  earth,  have  fancied  atmospheric  and  as- 
tronomic agents  of  combustion,  such  as  the  electric  storm, 
the  meteoric  shower,  increasing  solar  heat  and  even  stellar 
radiation  throughout  the  celestial  spaces,  exceeding  in  some 
regions  the  glare  of  a  tropical  sun.  And  if  both  classes  of 
igneous  influences  be  combined  in  our  fancy — those  which 
gleam  around  the  planet  in  the  blazing  comet  and  the  hurtling 
thunderbolt,  with  those  which  burst  from  within  it,  flaming  in 
its  thousands  of  volcanoes  and  shaking  its  populous  cities 
into  ruins — we  shall  be  at  no  loss  for  instruments  as  well  as 
presages  of  a  general  disaster. 

Most  later  geologists,  however,  have  maintained  the  sta- 
bility of  the  earth.  The  repeated  failures  following  attempts 
to  fix  the  date  of  its  predicted  dissolution  at  length  converted 
a  religious  foreboding  into  scientific  skepticism,  at  first  ex- 
pressed in  vagaries  wilder  than  the  fabled  descent  into  Aver- 
nus.  In  place  of  the  central  fires  and  combustible  contents  of 
the  globe,  was  imagined  a  hollow  sphere,  distended  by  ex- 
pansive forces,  lighted  by  the  two  subterranean  planets,  Pluto 
and  Proserpine,  and  even  peopled  with  imaginary  plants  and 
animals.  The  celebrated  Halley  published  a  paper  in  the 
Philosophical  Transactions  on  the  "Structure  of  the  Internal 
Parts  of  the  Earth  and  the  concave  habited  Arch  of  the 
Shell,"  in  which  he  gravely  explained  the  phenomena  of  ter- 
restrial magnetism  by  a  huge  metallic  nucleus  rotating  in  the 
interior  of  the  globe.  Holberg,  a  Norwegian  dramatist,  em- 
bodied a  quaint  satire  upon  the  inhabitants  of  the  upper  earth 
in  a  scientific  romance  respecting  the  physical  scenery,  peo- 
ple, and  institutions  which  had  been  discovered  on  a  journey 
into  the  nether  world.  The  more  notorious  Captain  Symmes 
repeatedly  invited  Sir  Humphrey  Davy  and  Baron  Hum- 
boldt to  undertake  a  subterranean  expedition  to  the  interior 
regions  through  a  cavernous  opening,  which  he  maintained 
would  be  found  near  the  North  Pole. 

And  such  pleasantries,  in  the  progress  of  science,  were 
seconded  by  more  exact  hypotheses  as  to  the  decline  or 
absence  of    infernal   fires.     Buffon,   indeed,   in    advance   of 


130  The  Schism  in  Geology.  [part  i. 

modern  researches,  consistently  with  his  view  of  the  earth  as 
a  dying  ember  of  the  sun,  had  already  anticipated,  from  its 
gradual  refrigeration,  a  reign  of  perpetual  winter  rather  than 
its  dissolution  in  flames.  And  recent  physicists,  according 
to  Professor  Winchell,  have  conjectured  that  the  diurnal  ro- 
tation due  to  primordial  heat  will  gradually  be  overcome  by 
the  lunar  tides,  the  day  waning  more  slowly  as  the  cooHng 
earth  spins  more  feebly,  until  at  length,  like  the  moon, 
it  shall  flutter  upon  its  axis  as  a  dead  world,  with  the 
same  pallid  face  ever  turned  to  the  sun.  Fourier,  though 
he  conceived  the  central  mass  to  be  twelve  times  hotter 
than  molten  iron,  had  so  little  fear  of  any  igneous  catas- 
trophe, that  he  computed  its  radiation  at  the  slow  rate  of 
about  a  three-thousandth  part  of  a  second  in  a  century,  only 
sufficient  to  melt  a  layer  of  ice  ten  feet  thick  in  that  time.  M. 
Pouillet  ingeniously  estimated  that  the  quantity  of  heat  de- 
rived annually  from  the  central  earth  is  not  one-fortieth  of 
that  received  from  the  sun,  which  alone  would  melt  a  stratum 
of  ice  around  the  globe  nearly  fifty  feet  thick  in  a  single  year. 
Mrs.  Somerville  has  remarked  that  the  conditions  of  vegetable 
and  animal  life  are  so  entirely  due  to  the  solar  rays  that  it  is 
of  very  little  consequence  whether  the  centre  of  the  globe  be 
liquid  fire  or  ice,  the  interior  heat  not  being  sufficient  to  melt 
the  snow  at  the  poles.  Sir  William  Thompson  and  Mr.  Hop- 
kins have  at  length  wholly  discarded  the  notion  of  any  existing 
interior  fire;  maintaining  that  if  the  globe  was  originally  in  a 
melted  state  it  must  have  cooled  and  hardened  from  the 
centre,  and  that  its  rigidity  and  general  solidity  can  be  mathe- 
matically proved  from  the  observed  rate  of  solar  and  lunar 
attraction.  It  is  indeed  held  by  some  eminent  geologists  that 
La  Place  long  ago  afforded  a  full  refutation  of  the  theory  of 
central  fluidity  by  demonstrating  that  since  the  time  of  Hip- 
parchus,  in  two  thousand  years,  the  mean  day  has  not  short- 
ened by  the  three-hundredth  part  of  a  second,  as  would  have 
been  the  case,  had  the  earth  been  a  cooling  and  shrinking 
globe,  rotating  with  increasing  velocity.  And  to  these  con- 
siderations have  been  added  others  in  favor  of  a  sort  of 
thermal  equilibrium  of  the  planet,  in  both  its  internal  and  ex- 
ternal relations.     Sir  John  Herschel  and  Mr.  Babbage,  on  the 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Gcalogy.  131 

hypothesis  of  an  interior  stratum  of  lava,  ascribed  earthquakes 
and  volcanos  to  the  unequal  pressure  of  the  crust  upon  the 
fluid  mass,  and  regarded  them  as  vents  and  safety-valves, 
serving  to  equalize  the  interior  temperature  of  the  earth  and 
maintain  the  general  tranquillity  of  its  surface.  Sir  Charles 
Lyell  not  only  contended  that  the  supposed  fiery  nucleus  of 
the  earth  could  not  exist  a  moment  without  melting  its  crust 
in  the  effort  for  uniform  temperature,  but  also  argued  that 
volcanoes  and  earthquakes  are  really  conservative  rather  than 
destructive  agencies,  proceeding  from  internal  chemical  ac- 
tion, and  tending  to  preserve  the  balance  of  land  over  the 
globe,  and  thus  sustain  the  successive  climates  and  species 
which  follow  its  shifting  continents.  The  younger  Herschel, 
besides  referring  terrestrial  climate  to  celestial  causes  alone, 
held  its  secular  changes  to  be  periodic  and  salutary  rather 
than  cumulative  and  disastrous,  ranging  between  excessive 
summer  and  winter,  through  unknown  epochs,  according  as 
the  decreasing  or  increasing  eccentricity  of  the  earth's  orbit 
yields  a  greater  or  less  amount  of  solar  heat,  Adhemar, 
Croll  and  Drayson,  combining  such  astronomical  data  with 
the  evidences  of  ancient  tropical  vegetation  at  the  poles,  have 
calculated  that  our  planet,  as  it  sways  and  nods  toward  the 
sun,  has  its  northern  and  southern  hemispheres  alternately 
crowned  with  verdure  or  capped  with  snow,  about  every 
other  twelve  thousand  years.  And  if  to  these  periodic  fluc- 
tuations of  temperature  within  the  solar  system  be  added 
those  which  may  prevail  beyond  it  in  the  stellar  regions,  as 
suggested  by  the  elder  Herschel  and  Poisson,  we  can  imagine 
the  earth,  while  it  follows  the  sun  among  the  stars  on  his 
journey  of  eighteen  million  years,  undergoing  climatic  revo- 
lutions quite  adequate  to  clothe  it  either  with  ice  or  with  fire, 
passing  indeed  through  a  sort  of  sidereal  winter  and  summer, 
amid  which  our  whole  historic  epoch,  with  all  its  swelling 
annals  and  teeming  arts  and  splendid  works,  shall  seem  tran- 
sient as  the  hues  of  morn  or  the  flowers  of  spring. 

The  third  and  ultimate  stage  of  perfect  indifference,  already 
reached  in  our  day,  is  that  of  repudiating  the  whole  biblical 
geology  as  no  longer  of  any  scientific  worth  or  relevance.  It 
was  not  strange  that  some  of  the  early  geologists  who  were 


132  The  Schism  in  Geology.  [part  i. 

of  a  devout  temper,  such  as  Leibnitz  and  Hooke,  should  be 
reluctant  to  press  theories  which  were  plainly  inconsistent 
with  received  interpretations  of  Genesis,  or  that  others  of 
them,  who  were  simply  animated  with  scientific  zeal,  such  as 
Vallisneriand  Hutton,  should  insist  upon  a  fair  field  foi-  their 
investigations,  by  excluding  manufactured  miracles  and  catas- 
trophes, and  referring  all  terrestrial  phenomena,  as  far  as  pos- . 
sible,  to  known  natural  laws  and  causes  now  existing,  without 
raising  speculative  questions  as  to  the  origin  and  destiny  of 
the  globe.  But  there  remains  another  class,  of  very  different 
spirit,  who  deny  that  the  revealed  cosmogony  is  even  logi- 
cally or  philosophically  essential  to  a  complete  theory  of  the 
earth,  and  have  banished  it  from  their  speculations,only  them- 
selves to  illustrate  anew  the  mundane  &^^  in  the  comedy  of 
Aristophanes.  Baron  Humboldt,  whilst  congratulating  geolo- 
gists that  their  science,  on  the  continent  at  least,  has  been 
emancipated  from  Semitic  influences,  nevertheless  himself 
essayed  the  problem  of  the  world-upholding  tortoise  by  pro- 
posing to  poise  a  liquid  globe  of  fire  in  a  thin  shell  of  granite, 
too  impossible,  as  Lyell  argues,  to  have  existed  even  for  an 
instant.  Sir  Charles  Lyell  himself,  who  always  treats  the 
Scriptures  with  respect,  indicates  his  sense  of  their  scientific 
value  by  studiously  excluding  them  from  his  "  Principles  of 
Geology,"  even  from  his  learned  chapter  on  oriental  cosmo- 
gony, whilst  the  sacred  books  of  the  Hindoos  are  discussed  and 
commended  as  of  peculiar  interest  to  the  geologist,  as  well  as  full 
of  sublime  conceptions  of  the  Deity.  "  But  you  are  not  there- 
fore to  think,"  says  the  Lysicles  of  Berkeley,  "that  Alciphron 
pays  any  more  real  regard  to  the  authority  of  such  apocryphal 
writers,  or  believes  one  syllable  of  the  Chinese,  Babylonian, 
or  Egyptian  traditions.  If  he  seem  to  give  them  a  preference 
before  the  Bible,  it  is  only  because  they  are  not  established 
by  law."  Professor  Max  Miiller,  with  the  extreme  of  scien- 
tific candor,  remarks  in  his  "  Chips  from  a  German  Work- 
shop," that  he  would  hail  with  equal  pleasure  any  solid  facts 
by  which  to  establish  the  dependence  of  Genesis  on  the  Zend 
Avesta,  or  the  dependence  of  the  Zend-Avesta  on  Genesis. 
Professor  Huxley,  in  an  essay  on  "  Geological  Reform,"  so  far 
from  admitting  with  Lyell  that  the  origin  and  destiny  of  the 


CHAP.  III.]  Biblical  Geology.  133 

globe  are  questions  to  be  settled  only  by  the  Infinite  Mind, 
maintains  that  we  are  as  competent  to  trace  the  genesis  of  a 
world  as  the  growth  of  a  fowl  within  the  &^^.  And  Mr. 
Herbert  Spencer,  throwing  off  all  reserve,  after  having  shown 
how  the  embryo  earth  was  formed  according  to  the  nebular 
hypothesis  out  of  a  fiery  nucleus  into  its  present  shape  and 
condition,  declares  that  if  one  of  our  leading  geologists  were 
asked  whether  he  believes  in  the  Biblical  Genesis,  he  would 
take  the  question  as  next  to  an  insult. 

On  the  revealed  side  of  the  same  science,  however,  there 
have  been  corresponding  departures  from  the  rational  theory 
of  the  earth.  The  first  stage  was  that  of  expelling  the  false 
scientific  geology  which  had  been  foisted  into  the  Scriptures. 
It  was  a  time  to  vindicate  them  from  erroneous  hypotheses, 
which  claimed  its  authority,  and  a  few  divines  were  found 
bold  enough  to  lead  the  way  to  a  more  scientific  interpretation. 
As  early  as  the  ninth  century,  St.  Virgilius  asserted  the 
true  figure  of  the  earth  against  the  rectangular  geography  of 
the  fathers.  In  spite  of  the  charge  of  diabolical  magic,  great 
scholastic  divines,  like  Roger  Bacon,  Albert  of  Bollstadt,  and 
St.  Vincent  of  Beauvais,  became  the  pioneers  in  physical  geo- 
graphy, natural  history,  and  other  geological  sciences,  which 
are  now  associated  only  with  secular  names.  Cardinal  Allia- 
cus,  early  in  the  fifteenth  century,  published  a  geographical 
"Picture  of  the  World,"  which  was  the  text-book  of  Columbus 
in  his  studies  and  voyages,  and  is  cited  by  Humboldt  as  the 
chief  authority  of  the  time.  Cardinal  Quirini  in  the  next  cen- 
tury, speculating  upon  the  fossil  shells  of  inland  regions,  at  a 
time  when  all  the  theologians  of  Europe  were  persuaded  of  their 
diluvian  origin,  endeavored  to  refer  them  to  purely  natural 
causes,  and  ventured  for  the  first  time  to  question  the  univer- 
sal prevalence  of  the  flood.  Dr.  John  Keil,  the  vindicator  of 
Newton  at  Edinburgh  and  Oxford,  published  an  Examination 
of  the  Scripture  cosmogonies  of  Burnet,  Warren,  and  Whis- 
ton,  assailing  with  caustic  wit  their  pedantic  treatment  of  the 
deluge,  which  he  insisted  should  be  regarded  only  as  a  moral 
event  or  supernatural  judgment,  and  not  as  an  ordinary  freshet 
drowning  a  few  country  people.  The  learned  Carmclitan 
friar,  Cirillo  Generelli,  before  the  academy  of  Cremona,  elo- 


134  The  Schism  in  Geology.  [part  i. 

quently  denounced  the  same  school  of  divines,  as  capriciously 
calling  the  Deity  upon  the  stage  to  confirm  their  precon- 
ceived hypotheses,  and  building  systems  in  the  air  which 
cannot  be  propped  up  without  a  miracle.  Bishop  Herbert 
Croft,  in  his  "  Animadversions  "  upon  Burnet's  theory,  repu- 
diated it  as  a  mere  ingenious  romance,  tending  to  the  discredit 
of  the  Scriptures  as  v/ell  as  of  true  science ;  whilst  the  Puritan 
naturalist,  Ray,  stigmatized  the  Woodwardian  hypothesis  as 
an  attempt  to  adjust  scientific  phenomena  to  theological  preju- 
dice. Bishop  Stillingfleet,  whose  Origines  Sacrae  appeared 
in  the  midst  of  the  controversy,  saw  no  urgent  necessity  from 
the  Scripture  to  assert  the  universality  of  the  deluge  as  to  the 
globe  of  the  earth,  unless  it  could  be  proved  that  the  whole 
earth  was  peopled  before  the  flood.  Matthew  Poole,  also,  the 
great  non-conformist  divine,  in  his  "  Synopsis  of  Critical  Wri- 
ters "  on  Genesis,  argued  that  to  confine  the  deluge  to  the 
habitable  world,  besides  being  all  that  its  moral  design  re- 
quired, would  effectually  silence  those  irreligious  persons  who 
cavil  at  the  truth  of  the  sacred  narrative.  Bishop  Clayton  of 
Killala,  in  his  learned  "  Vindication  of  the  Old  Testament 
History,"  broached,  on  physical  as  well  as  scriptural  grounds, 
that  theory  of  a  partial  deluge  now  so  generally  received,  but 
then  opposed  as  a  deadly  heresy.  The  Rev.  John  Michell, 
from  the  very  chair  of  Woodward,  began  to  issue  geological 
essays,  in  which  the  pious  speculations  of  his  predecessor  were 
avoided  with  scientific  rigor.  Bishop  Berkeley,  among  other 
sagacious  remarks  in  his  "  Alciphron,"  inferred  the  compara- 
tively recent  origin  of  man  from  the  lack  of  civil  or  historic 
remains  among  the  shells  and  stones  buried  underground 
many  thousand  years  ago,  and  argued  a  beginning  of  the 
world  from  such  natural  causes  as  the  decrease  of  fluids, 
the  sinking  of  hills,  and  the  diminution  of  planetary  motions. 
At  length  Dr.  Chalmers,  as  if  to  close  the  long  fruitless  de- 
fence of  an  untenable  position,  declared  from  a  chair  of  St, 
Andrew's,  in  the  city  of  Hutton,  that  the  Mosaic  writings  do 
not  fix  the  antiquity  of  the  globe.  And  from  this  time  re- 
peated attempts  have  been  made  by  such  scientific  divines  as 
Pye  Smith,  Fleming,  and  Hitchcock,  to  reconstruct  the  whole 
scripture  doctrine  of  the  earth  as  the  appointed  abode  of  man. 


CHAP.  III.]  Biblical  Geology.  135 

Meanwhile,  in  the  next  stage  of  indifference,  various  dog- 
mas still  remained  not  yet  adjusted  to  the  new  scientific  ge- 
ology. Whilst  the  votaries  of  that  science  were  investigating 
the  physical  formation,  development  and  destiny  of  the  globe, 
theologians  adhered  to  traditional  teachings  concerning  the 
primitive  chaos,  the  six  days'  work,  and  the  predicted  new 
earth.  As  to  the  primitive  chaos  out  of  which  the  earth  was 
formed  by  the  Divine  Spirit,  religious  writers  had  long  been 
agreed.  The  idea  of  an  original  mass  or  void  was  so  promi- 
nent in  all  ancient  cosmogonies,  both  pagan  and  Christian,  as 
to  have  suggested  a  common  revelation  for  its  source.  The 
Hindoos  had  been  taught  in  the  Songs  of  the  Vedas  and  the 
Institutes  of  Menu,  that  the  first  sole  Cause  with  a  thought 
created  the  waters  and  then  moved  upon  them  in  the  form  of 
Brahma,  the  creative  agent,  until  the  shapeless  ocean  was  dis- 
tributed into  land  and  sea  and  sky.  The  Egyptians  believed, 
as  Orpheus  sang  to  the  Greeks,  according  to  Aristophanes, 
that  the  sable-plumaged  Night  having  been  embraced  by  Love, 
resplendent  with  golden  pinions,  conceived  the  world  as  a 
chaotic  Q%^,  and  by  brooding  upon  it  developed  it  in  its  or- 
ganized form.  The  Persian  fire -worshippers,  as  reformed  by 
Zoroaster  and  represented  by  Manichsus,  held  that  from  the 
Eternal  Being,  through  his  creative  Word  Honofer,  had  pro- 
ceeded the  two  principles  of  light  and  darkness,  good  and 
evil,  termed  Ormuzd  and  Ahriman,  by  whose  antagonistic 
efforts  the  contrasts  of  the  universe  were  produced.  Many  of 
the  philosophizing  Jews  and  Christian  gnostics  maintained  a 
similar  dualism  of  God  and  the  world,  spirit  and  matter,  the 
former  fashioning  the  latter  from  a  crude  into  an  organized 
state,  in  spite  of  Satanic  opposition.  Some  of  the  early  Church 
fathers,  such  as  Chrysostom,  Basil  and  Ambrose,  in  their 
homilies  upon  Genesis,  taught  with  more  or  less  distinctness 
that  the  earth  was  first  created  a  rude  and  shapeless  mass, 
without  form  or  ornament,  and  that  it  was  only  after  an  un- 
known period  of  darkness  that  light  was  made  and  the  six 
days'  work  proceeded.  The  schoolmen  distinctly  held  the 
doctrine  of  an  original  chaos,  carefully  distinguishing  between 
a  primary  immediate  creation  of  matter  in  the  beginning,  by 
which   the  simple    substances  or  elements  originated,  and   a 


136  TJie  Schism  in  Geology.  [part  i. 

secondary  mediate  creation  of  forms,  during  the  six  days,  by 
which  the  elements  were  disposed  and  combined  as  organized 
products.  Thus  the  Venerable  Bede,  in  a  work  on  the  Hexae- 
meron,  taught  that  before  any  day  God  made  the  angelic  nature 
and  formless  matter,  the  six  days  then  following,  as  narrated 
in  Genesis.  Hugh  of  St.  Victor  held  that  light  was  created 
not  out  of  nothing,  but  out  of  pre-existing  shapeless  matter, 
in  order  to  prefigure  to  rational  beings  the  transformation 
from  moral  deformity  into  beauty,  and  that  the  separation  of 
light  and  darkness  involved  a  corresponding  separation  of 
good  and  evil  angels.  At  length  Peter  Lombard,  in  his  Sen- 
tences, expressed  it  as  the  orthodox  teaching  that  in  the  be- 
ginning God  created  the  heavens  (that  is,  the  angels)  arid  the 
earth  (that  is  the  confused,  shapeless  material  of  the  four  ele- 
ments, called  chaos  by  the  Greeks)  and  that  thereafter  the  ele- 
ments were  distinguished  and  assigned  to  different  objects, 
according  to  their  species.  Protestant  divines  also,  such  as 
Calvin,  Peter  Martyr,  Hollazius  and  Quenstedt,  maintained 
that,  while  the  angels,  the  soul  of  Adam  and  the  elements 
were  created  of  nothing,  all  other  organized  beings  were 
gradually  produced  from  a  rude  and  indigested  mass  or 
chaos,  upon  which  the  creative  Spirit  moved  or  brooded  with 
vivifying  and  organizing  power.  Some  mystical  divines  went 
so  far  as  to  admit  the  agency  of  the  devil  in  thwarting  or 
marring  the  creative  process,  which  they  represented  as  itself 
a  degradation  from  the  infinite  into  the  finite,  while  chaos  was 
a  still  farther  degeneration,  resulting  from  the  fall  of  the 
angels.  As  yet,  however,  few  if  any  attempts  could  be  made 
to  connect  these  various  dogmas  with  physical  researches  into 
the  supposed  nebular  origin  of  the  globe ;  and  the  aqueous 
and  igneous  phenomena,  since  claimed  by  the  Neptunists  and 
Plutonists,  such  as  inundations  and  volcanoes,  were  simply 
viewed  as  special  divine  judgments,  or  referred  to  the  primal 
curse  upon  the  earth  for  man's  sake. 

As  to  the  hexaemeron  or  six  creative  days,  various  opinions 
had  been  handed  down  from  the  primitive  revelation.  The 
eastern  cosmogonies  had  generally  proceeded  upon  the  con- 
ception of  a  creation  accomplished  in  successive  periods. 
Brahma,  the  creative  deity  of  the  Hindoos,  had  been  repre- 


CHAP.  III.]  Biblical  Geology.  137 

sentecl  as  alternately  vivifying  and  destroying  the  world  by 
waking  and  sleeping  at  the  dawn  and  night  of  each  long  day 
of  his  existence,  through  many  thousand  kalpas  or  ages. 
Zoroaster  had  taught  the  Persians  that  God  created  the  world 
not  in  six  natural  days,  but  in  six  times  of  different  length, 
together  amounting  to  three  hundred  and  sixty-five  days  or 
full  years,  with  a  succession  of  works  substantially  similar  to 
those  described  by  Moses.  The  Etrurians  also  held  the  same 
order  of  creation,  but  allotted  six  thousand  years  to  the  pro- 
cess, each  thousand  years  constituting  a  day.  According  to 
the  Jewish  Cabbala,  the  world  was  created  in  six  days,  which 
respectively  prefigure  the  six  thousand  years  of  its  history, 
the  seventh  millennium  to  follow  as  a  great  Sabbath  or  era  of 
universal  peace.  Philo  the  Jew,  in  his  Sacred  Allegories,  de- 
clared that  only  rustic  simplicity  could  imagine  the  world  to 
have  been  created  in  six  days,  or  in  any  definite  time,  when 
the  perfect  number  seven,  the  Sabbatical  period,  was  all  that 
was  intended  by  the  septenary  division  of  the  week  of  the 
creation.  And  the  majority  of  the  Christian  fathers,  with 
some  of  the  schoolmen,  regarded  the  creative  days  as  mere 
timeless  acts  or  works  of  God,  figuratively  represented  as 
successive  mornings  and  evenings.  Origen,  in  his  Reply  to 
Celsus,  utterly  repudiated  the  external  sense  of  Scripture  as 
to  the  six  days  consumed  in  creation,  and  maintained  that  the 
world  was  produced  in  a  single  moment ;  exclaiming.  What 
sane  mind  can  think  that  the  first,  second  and  third  day,  with 
morning  and  evening,  could  have  occurred  without  sun,  moon 
and  stars !  Athanasius,  too,  in  his  "  Sermons  against  the 
Arians,"  asserted  that  no  one  thing  was  made  before  another, 
but  all  things  were  produced  together  by  one  and  the  same 
mandate.  Augustine,  unequivocally  adopted  the  sentiment 
of  Ecclesiasticus,  "  He  that  liveth  forever  created  all  things  at 
once,"  and  argued  from  the  text  of  Genesis  that  the  first  three 
days  could  not  have  been  measured  by  the  rising  and  setting 
of  the  sun,  before  the  appearance  of  that  luminary,  and  that 
the  six  creative  acts  were  not  successive  in  fact,  but  only  in 
our  thought,  and  so  represented  merely  in  accommodation  to 
our  earthly  conception  of  work-days,  which  begin  and  end 
with  morning  and  evening.     And  the  same  general  view  was 


138  The  Schism  in  Geology.  [part  i. 

accepted  by  Aquinas  and  Albert.  Other  scholastics  and 
most  Protestant  divines,  however,  were  inclined  to  the  literal 
sense  of  days  of  twenty-four  hours.  Hugh  of  St.  Victor, 
combining  the  literal  with  an  allegorical  interpretation,  held 
that  the  Almighty  might  have  created  the  world  differently, 
even  in  a  moment  of  time,  but  chose  to  form  it  out  of  chaos 
in  six  days,  in  order  to  convey  moral  instruction  to  His  intel- 
ligent creatures  in  successive  lessons.  Peter  Lombard,  di- 
gesting the  Church  authorities  on  the  question,  in  his  Book  of 
Sentences,  inferred  that  God  formed  the  elements  into  distinct 
orders  of  beings  not  at  once,  as  some  of  the  holy  fathers 
taught,  but  as  it  appeared  to  others,  through  intervals  of  time, 
even  six  diurnal  revolutions.  Calvin  also  repudiated  the  tra- 
ditionary teaching,  that  the  world  was  created  in  a  moment, 
and  argued  that  six  days  were  employed  in  its  formation,  not 
that  God  had  need  of  this  succession,  but  that  He  might  en- 
gage us  in  the  consideration  of  His  works,  and  render  them 
perspicuous  and  intelligible  as  matter  of  devout  contempla- 
tion. Turrettin  defended  the  same  opinion  as  required  by 
the  obvious  sense  of  Genesis,  especially  the  reason  annexed 
to  the  fourth  commandment,  "  For  in  six  days  the  Lord  made 
heaven  and  earth  and  all  that  in  them  is";  though  he  also 
argued  that  the  whole  work  of  each  day  was  produced  by  an 
instantaneous  fiat,  plants  and  animals  in  a  mature  state,  and, 
therefore,  in  the  autumn  of  the  year,  and  not  in  the  season  of 
spring,  as  some  of  the  fathers  had  fancied.  Archbishop 
Usher,  whose  "Annals"  afforded  the  chronology  of  our 
English  Bible,  fixed  the  date  of  the  creation  of  the  world  on 
the  25th  of  October,  4004  B.  C;  and  the  painstaking  Baptist 
commentator,  Dr.  Gill,  counted  the  successive  days  of  the 
creative  week  from  that  epoch  as  carefully  as  if  he  were  cal- 
culating an  almanac.  Geologists,  it  will  be  remembered,  had 
not  begun  to  claim  for  the  successive  strata,  floras  and  faunas, 
those  indefinite  intervals  of  duration  which  would  have  sug- 
gested that  the  six  days  before  the  Sabbath  may  have  been 
but  confused  formative  eras,  followed  by  the  present  human 
epoch  of  order  and  tranquillity. 

As  to  the  future  new  earth,  predictions  had  appeared  in 
nearly  all  the  sacred  writings  of  antiquity.     From  the  earliest 


CHAP.  III.]  Biblical  Geology.  139 

time,  in  all  nations,  occasional  destructions  and  renovations  of 
the  earth  had  been  associated  with  a  degeneracy  and  regen- 
eration of  mankind,  as  divine  judgments  and  blessings,  and 
had  been  referred  to  the  alternate  agency  of  water  and  fire 
the  two  most  powerful  and  familiar  causes  of  disaster.  Plato 
tells  us,  in  the  Timeeus,  that  the  Egyptians  believed  that 
deluges  and  conflagrations  were  employed  by  the  gods  to 
arrest  the  extreme  debasement  of  mortals  and  renew  the  earth 
for  another  golden  age.  In  the  Sibylline  books,  this  pre- 
dicted golden  age  of  the  earth  is  depicted,  according  to  Virgil, 
almost  in  the  language  of  Isaiah,  as  a  time  when  the  kid  shall 
no  longer  fear  the  lion,  the  serpent  and  noxious  herb  be  de- 
stroyed, and  clusters  of  grapes  hang  upon  the  bramble.  The 
Stoics,  in  describing  the  same  scene,  employed  the  very  epi- 
thets of  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul,  such  as  restitution,  palingene- 
sia  and  resurrection,  and  referred  to  the  purifying  agency  of 
fire,  as  inculcated  in  the  Oiphic  Hymns.  The  Arabians  had 
their  fable  of  the  Phoenix,  according  to  which  the  earth,  after 
having  been  burned  up,  would  rise  out  of  the  ashes  with  re- 
newed vigor  and  beauty.  The  doctrine  of  a  renovation  of  the 
earth  by  a  general  conflagration,  was  also  common  among  the 
Jews  in  our  Saviour's  time,  and  as  enunciated  by  the  apostles 
was  adopted  by  the  fathers,  and  at  length  matured  by  the 
schoolmen  into  the  dogmas  of  purgatory  and  the  final  judg- 
ment, with  a  blending  of  pagan  and  Christian  traditions,  as 
may  be  found  expressed  in  the  first  verse  of  the  Dies  Irae,  an- 
ticipating the  dissolution  of  the  world  in  flames  on  the  au- 
thority of  both  David  and  the  Sibyl.  Protestant  theologians 
also,  with  the  exception  of  those  who  interpreted  the  prophe- 
cies figuratively,  looked  forward  through  the  fires  of  the  last 
day  to  a  resurgent  earth,  adorned  and  purified  as  the  abode  of 
the  righteous,  the  realm  of  Messiah,  and  mayhap  the  scene  of 
heaven  itself  But  as  yet  such  opinions  were  based  upon  the 
Scriptures  exclusively,  as  part  of  a  dogmatic  system,  without 
any  physical  reference  to  the  central  fires  of  the  earth  or  its 
supposed  catastrophic  or  climatic  revolutions  in  the  astro- 
nomical heavens. 

At  length,  in  our  century,  we  have  reached  that  last  stage 
of  open  rupture,  in  which  the  whole  scientific  geology  is  re- 


140  Tlie  Schism  in  Geology.  [part  i. 

jected  as  without  Scriptural  warrant  or  interest.  It  was  not 
surprising  that  judicious  divines,  such  as  Generelh  and  Still- 
ingfleet,  should  have  hesitated  to  incorporate  with  Genesis  the 
grotesque  hypotheses  which  marked  the  credulous  infancy  of 
the  science,  or  that  others  should  have  insisted  upon  the  gram- 
matical and  dogmatic  sense,  against  the  many  pretended  sci- 
entific interpretations  which  were  merely  of  a  speculative  na- 
ture. But  a  class  has  since  arisen,  of  less  genial  spirit,  who 
would  exclude  the  true  geology,  as  well  as  the  false,  from  the 
Scriptures  and  retain  a  doctrine  of  the  earth  avowedly  at  vari- 
ance with  its  known  physical  development  and  structure.  Dr. 
Chalmers  himself,  assuming  that  Genesis  was  not  a  complete 
history  of  creation,  suggested  that  many  irrelevant  geological 
chapters  might  have  been  omitted  between  the  first  and 
second  verses,  in  consistency  with  its  general  design  as  a 
revelation  to  the  Jewish  and  Christian  world.  Dean  Buck- 
land,  in  his  Bridgewater  Treatise,  on  the  same  theory  of  par- 
tial reserve,  trenchantly  asks  of  those  persons  who  consider 
physical  science  a  fit  subject  of  revelation,  what  point  they 
can  imagine  short  of  a  communication  of  Omniscience,  at 
which  such  a  revelation  might  have  stopped  without  imper- 
fections of  omission,  whether  at  the  epoch  of  Ptolemy  or 
Copernicus  or  Newton.  Archbishop  Sumner,  in  his  "  Records 
of  Creation,"  maintains  that  the  expressions  of  Moses  are  evi- 
dently accommodated  to  the  first  and  familiar  appearances  de- 
rived from  the  sensible  phenomena  of  the  earth  and  heavens. 
Archdeacon  Pratt  of  Calcutta,  in  his  "Scripture  and  Science 
not  at  Variance,"  though  holding  himself  ready  for  a  scientific 
explanation  should  it  come,  somewhat  incautiously  prejudges 
that  Scripture  was  not  designed  to  teach  us  natural  philoso- 
phy, and  that  it  is  in  vain  to  attempt  to  make  a  cosmogony 
out  of  its  statements.  The  Rev.  W.  D.  Conybeare,  in  his  "  Ge- 
ology of  England  and  Wales,"  having  boldly  premised  the 
principle,  that  we  should  first  determine  what  ought  reasona- 
bly to  be  expected  in  Genesis,  announced  that  the  connection 
of  geology  will  be  with  natural  rather  than  revealed  religion. 
For  such  reasons  the  Edinburgh  Review,  noticing  the  Mosaic 
cosmogonies  of  the  day,  expressed  it  as  a  general  opinion,  that 
it  would  be  better  to  leave  altogether  untouched  the  connec- 


CHAP.  III.]  The  Schism  in  Anthropology,  141 

tion  of  geology  with  the  sacred  narrative.  And  learned  di- 
vines and  commentators,  such  as  Knapp,  Gerlach  and  Keil,  liv- 
ing amid  the  grand  geological  discoveries  of  Cuvier,  Lyell  and 
Von  Buch,  have  descanted  upon  the  six  days  in  which  God 
made  heaven  and  earth  and  all  that  in  them  is,  as  if  they  were 
mere  dramatic  pictures  or  magical  fiats,  distributed  literally 
through  the  working  hours  of  a  week,  and  designed  mainly 
to  enforce  the  proper  observance  of  the  Sabbath. 

And  thus  geology,  the  science  which  embraces  the  origin 
and  destiny  of  the  globe  we  inhabit,  if  governed  by  the  indif- 
ferent spirit,  instead  of  retracing  the  Creator  through  all  His 
works,  would  be  remanded  either  toward  the  Jewish  cabbala 
and  the  Patristic  allegories,  or  toward  the  heathen  cosmogo- 
nies of  the  Hindoo  and  the  Greek. 


The  Schism  in  Anthropology. 

In  anthropology  a  similar  truce  has  already  been  pro- 
claimed, and  is  fast  growing  into  a  like  rupture. 

On  the  rational  side  of  the  science  there  has  been  the  same 
gradual  divergence  from  the  revealed  doctrine  of  mankind. 
In  the  first  and  legitimate  stage  of  separation  came  the  decline 
of  the  false  biblical  anthropology  of  the  schools.  It  Avas  the 
time  when  the  scholastic  definitions  of  man  were  being  tested 
by  the  demonstrations  of  the  scalpel,  and  great  naturalists 
were  loyally  tracing  the  steps  to  his  throne  in  the  kingdom  of 
nature.  Early  in  the  fourteenth  century,  Mondino  of  Bologna, 
the  father  of  modern  anatomy,  whose  treatise  on  the  internal 
organs  became  the  text-book  in  the  schools  of  Italy  for  two 
centuries,  had  restored  and  improved  the  system  of  Galen  by 
means  of  human  dissections,  at  a  time  when  they  were  for- 
bidden as  sacrilege  with  Moslem  rigor.  Leonardo  da  Vinci, 
the  universal  genius  of  the  fifteenth  century,  scarcely  less  ac- 
complished in  science  than  in  art,  for  the  mere  uses  of  paint- 
ing and  sculpture,  had  delineated  the  exterior  muscles,  with  an 
intuitive  accuracy  which  Hunter  pronounced  unsurpassed  in 
that  age,  and  Sir  Charles  Bell  has  since  but  confirmed  as  the 
true  anatomy  of  expression.  Berenger  of  Carpi,  advancing 
beyond  Galen  and    Mondino,  had  demonstrated  the  sj^stem 


142  The  Schism  in  Antliropology.  [part  i. 

of  the  internal  tissues,  by  dissecting  and  comparing  apes  and 
men,  with  a  boldness  which  at  length  led  to  his  banishment. 
Achillini,  Eustachius,  and  Fallopius,  by  the  discoveries  still 
associated  with  their  names,  had  illustrated  the  same 
golden  age  of  Italian  Medicine,  whilst  the  rest  of  Christendom 
were  stigmatizing  such  researches  as  mere  profane  temerity, 
Andrew  Vesalius  of  Brussels,  usually  styled  the  founder  of 
human  anatomy,  who  for  its  sake  braved  the  terrors  of  the 
plague,  the  gibbet,  the  charnel  house,  exile,  shipwreck,  and  a 
forgotten  grave,  at  length  appeared,  to  complete  the  labors  of 
his  predecessors  in  his  great  work  on  the  Structure  of  the 
Human  Body,  exhibiting  for  the  first  time  a  full  view  of 
all  its  organs  and  textures,  with  the  aid  of  the  magic  pencil 
of  Titian.  Servetus,  Levasseur,  and  Caesalpin  threw  out  con- 
jectures which  it  is  the  glory  of  Harvey  to  have  confirmed, 
by  demonstrating  the  circulation  of  the  blood 

And  at  the  same  time,  in  other  connected  fields  of  living 
nature,  Gesner  of  Germany,  Aldrovandus  of  Italy,  and  Ray  of 
England,  building  their  ponderous  tomes,  one  above  another, 
upon  the  natural  history  of  Pliny,  slowly  erected  the  countless 
genera  and  species  of  plants,  insects,  birds,  and  beasts,  in  lucid 
order,  toward  the  genus  Man,  at  the  summit  of  the  animal 
scale.  Linnaeus,  the  great  Swedish  naturalist,  soon  placed 
him  upon  that  pedestal,  in  his  "  System  of  Nature,"  by  pro- 
posing him  as  a  legitimate  subject  of  comparative  zoology,  to 
be  classed  anatomically  next  above  the  apes,  in  the  sovereign 
order  of  primates,  as  the  head  of  the  mammalia.  Buffon, 
Blumenbach,  and  Cuvier  followed  in  the  steps  of  Linnaeus,  and 
led  the  way  for  Laurence,  Morton,  Agassiz,  by  still  further 
distinguishing  him  as  chief  of  the  vertebrates,  erect,  two- 
handed,  with  large  frontal  brain,  speech  and  reason ;  and 
distributed  his  species  according  to  climate  and  color,  into 
varieties  such  as  the  white,  yellow  and  black  races  of  Europe, 
Asia  and  Africa. 

In  the  next  ascending  science,  Adelung,  fulfilling  the  pro- 
phetic genius  of  Gesner  and  Leibnitz,  the  forerunners  of  com- 
parative philology,  afforded  the  first  means  of  studying 
affinities  of  speech  as  well  as  of  race,  by  publishing  the 
"Mithridatcs,"  or  cjeneral  science  of  lancruafjcs,  containing  the 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Anthropology.  143 

Lord's  Prayer,  in  five  hundred  dialects,  systematically  arranged. 
Vater  carried  forward  the  unfinished  work  of  Adelung.  Prich- 
ard,  with  prodigious  research  and  learning,  combined  the 
study  of  languages  with  that  of  nations,  in  his  Natural  History 
of  Mankind.  Frederick  Schlegel,  in  his  Essay  on  the  Lan- 
guage of  the  Hindoos,  sketched  with  philosophical  genius 
that  historical  connection  of  the  Indian  and  European  tongues, 
which  Sir  William  Jones  had  already  surmised.  Francis 
Bopp,  by  his  "  Comparative  Grammar"  of  the  same  dialects, 
demonstrated  their  original  identity  of  structure.  And  William 
Humboldt,  Latham,  and  Bunsen,  penetrating  to  the  philoso- 
phy as  well  as  history  of  all  human  speech,  began  to  reduce 
it  to  classes  and  kindreds,  such  as  the  monosyllabic,  aggluti- 
nate and  amalgamate;  the  Plamitic,  Shemitic,  and  Japhetic; 
the  African,  Turanian,  and  Aryan. 

Archaeology,  too,  on  a  still  higher  plane  of  research,  joined 
the  study  of  human  races  and  tongues  with  that  of  ancient  arts, 
as  Champollion  and  Lepsius  in  Egypt,  Layard  and  Robin- 
son in  Syria,  Stevens  and  Pickering  in  America,  Moffat  and 
Livingstone  in  Africa,  and  Nillson  in  Europe  collected  the 
first  materials  for  tracing  the  lost  epochs  and  stages  of  primi- 
tive civilization,  such  as  the  ages  of  iron,  of  bronze,  and  of 
stone.  At  length  archaeo-geology,  the  science  which  crowns 
all  the  other  anthropological  studies  with  that  of  animal  and 
human  remains,  has  ventured  still  further  backward  through 
the  past  organic  epochs  of  the  globe  in  the  steps  of  Frere, 
Christol,  and  Schmerling,  among  the  extinct  climates,  floras, 
and  faunas  co-eval  with  pre-historic  man,  in  the  times  of  the 
glacier,  the  pine,  the  gigantic  reindeer,  and  the  lake- village. 
And  thus  the  whole  field  has  been  cleared  for  such  living 
anatomists  as  Gratiolet,  Leidy,  and  Owen  ;  such  linguists  as 
Max  Muller  and  Whitney ;  such  antiquarians  as  Rawlinson 
and  Schlieman  and  such  paljEontologists  as  Pictet,  Cope  and 
Marsh,  to  attack  from  all  points  the  complex  problem  of  man, 
viewed  as  a  crowning  product  of  the  terrestrial  system  mould- 
ed by  organic  and  climatic  laws. 

But  meanwhile,  in  the  next  more  marked  stage  of  separa- 
tion, had  been  growing  up  a  mere  speculative  anthropology 
in  place  of  that  true  biblical  anthropology  which  still  endured. 


144  ^^^^  Schism  in  Antliropology.  [part  i. 

For  the  Scripture  doctrines  of  the  fall  of  man  and  the  first  and 
second  Adam,  were  gradually  substituted  various  physical  hy- 
potheses concerning  the  origin,  the  unity  and  the  destiny  of 
the  human  race.  As  to  the  first  of  these  questions,  there  were 
two  rival  hypotheses.  The  one  was  that  of  a  transmuta- 
tion or  development  of  species.  It  had  been  a^  conceit  of  the 
Greeks  and  Romans,  as  expressed  by  Horace  in  his  Satires, 
that  when  the  animals  first  crept  forth  from  the  newly-formed 
earth,  a  dumb  and  filthy  herd,  they  fought  for  acorns  and 
hiding-places  with  their  nails  and  fists,  then  with  cudgels,  and 
finally  with  arms,  as  experience  taught  them;  they  next  in- 
vented names  for  things  and  words  to  express  their  thoughts ; , 
and  at  length  began  to  abstain  from  war,  to  fortify  their  towns, 
and  to  enact  laws.  But  as  the  Christian  mind  of  western  Eu- 
rope became  imbued  with  the  doctrine  of  the  fall  of  man  from 
Paradise,  this  classic  myth  of  his  anim.al  origin  disappeared; 
and  it  was  only  after  a  long  course  of  rigorous  speculation  and 
by  successive  conquests  over  religious  prejudice  and  physical 
antipathy,  that  the  pleasantry  of  the  satirist  has  become  a  grave 
question  of  science,  and  even  such  a  familiar  topic  of  litera- 
ture, that  Mr.  Hallam  does  not  hesitate  to  affirm  that  "the 
framework  of  the  body  of  him  who  has  weighed  the  stars  and 
made  the  lightning  his  slave,  approaches  to  that  of  a  speech- 
less brute  who  wanders  in  the  forests  of  Sumatra."  De  Mail- 
let,  the  French  consul  at  Cairo,  early  in  the  last  century,  veil- 
ing his  name  under  the  anagram  of  Telliamed,  and  his  ironi- 
cal purpose  in  a  "Dialogue  between  a  Christian  Missionary 
and  a  Heathen  Sage,"  may  be  said  to  have  led  the  way  to  this 
speculation,  by  describing  the  primitive  animals  as  emerging 
from  the  slime  of  the  deluge  and  becoming  gradually,  through 
successive  generations,  adapted  in  their  organization  to  the 
slowly  desiccated  earth.  James  Burnet,  better  known  as  the 
eccentric  Lord  Monboddo,  near  the  middle  of  the  last  cen- 
tury, in  his  learned  work  on  the  Origin  and  Progress  of  Lan- 
guages, had  entertained  the  wits  of  Edinburgh  and  provoked 
the  broad  sallies  of  Samuel  Johnson,  with  his  grim  conceit  of 
a  primitive  nation  of  monkeys,  or  long-tailed  men,  who  had 
lost  the  caudal  appendage  as  they  invented  speech,  clothing, 
and  the  other  appliances  of  civilization.     Lamarck,  one  of  the 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  AntJiropology.  145 

greatest  of  the  French  naturahsts,  at  the  close  of  the  century, 
followed  with  his  Philosophical  Zoology,  in  which,  with  much 
more  knowledge  and  acuteness,  he  broached  the  imposing 
theory  of  a  gradual  transmutation  of  one  species  into  another 
through  the  whole  organic  scale,  from  the  mollusk  up  to  the 
monkey,  and  from  the  monkey  up  to  man,  by  means  of  their 
instinctive  efforts  to  adjust  themselves  to  new  circumstances; 
as  the  turtle,  forced  to  live  on  land,  at  length  emerged  a  tor- 
toise; as  the  cow,  browsing  upon  high  limbs,  grew  into  the 
camel opard ;  as  the  wild  goat,  by  a  life  of  flight  and  terror,  was 
changed  to  the  gazelle  ;  and  as  the  ourang,  driven  from  the 
trees  to  the  ground,  became  erect,  dexterous,  articulate,  ambi- 
tious, and  at  last  civilized  man.  Geoffrey  St.  Hilaire,  for  thirty 
years  afterwards,  in  the  Academy  of  Sciences,  stood  forth  as 
the  champion  of  the  same  extraordinaiy  hypothesis,  until  it 
was  silenced  by  the  great  name  of  Cuvier,  who  cited  the  em- 
balmed animals  and  men  of  ancient  Egypt  as  witnesses  that 
their  species  had  not  changed  for  thirty  centuries.  The  au- 
thor of  the  "Vestiges  of  Creation"  recalled  the  opinion  from 
obscurity  mainly  to  show  its  defects  and  surmise  the  exist- 
ence in  the  divine  mind  of  some  higher  law  of  organic  pro- 
gression than  the  mere  blind  Avants  and  efforts  of  animals  them- 
selves. And  Professor  Richard  Owen,  the  great  comparative 
anatomist,  many  years  ago  surmised  the  probable  action  of  a 
physical  law  by  which  nature  has  advanced,  with  slow  and 
stately  steps,  through  the  archetypal  light,  from  the  earliest 
vertebrate  in  the  fish  to  the  glorious  form  of  man. 

At  length  Mr.  Alfred  Wallace,  in  his  work  on  "  Natural 
Selection,"  has  proposed .  such  a  law,  in  accordance  with 
which  it  is  held  that  nature,  or  the  God  of  Nature,  ever  selects 
the  best  breeds  among  competing  races,  or  the  fittest  to  sur- 
vive in  given  circumstances;  the  tortoise  remaining  long  after 
the  stranded  shell ;  the  antelope  distancing  the  kid  in  the  race 
for  life,  and  the  giraffe  feeding  aloft  where  the  flocks  can  no 
longer  graze.  Dr.  Hooker,  about  the  same  time,  in  an  Essay 
on  the  Flora  of  Australia,  admitted  the  operation  of  a  similar 
law  of  continuous  variation  of  species  throughout  the  whole- 
vegetable  kingdom  during  indefinite  periods,  until  the  beech 
has  supplanted  the  oak  and  the  pine,  and  the  garden  rose  has 


146  Tlie  Schism  in  Anthropology.  [part  i. 

bloomed  out  of  the  wild  thorn.  Mr.  Charles  Darwin,  who 
shares  the  honor  of  the  theory  with  Wallace  and  Hooker,  in  a 
simultaneous  treatise  on  the  "  Origin  of  Species  or  the  Preser- 
vation of  Favored  Races  in  the  Struggle  of  Life,"  soon  applied 
it  to  the  human  species  in  his  work  on  the  "Descent  of  Man," 
arguing  from  his  embryonic  stages  and  rudimental  organs, 
that  he  must  have  originated  in  a  hairy  quadruped  of  the  Old 
World,  furnished  with  pointed  ears  and  a  long  tail,  and  proba- 
bly arboreal  in  its  habits ;  and  more  recently  has  published  an 
essay  on  the  "Expression  of  Animals,"  designed  to  trace  the 
legacies  of  their  instinct  and  passion  in  the  human  physiogno- 
my. Professor  Huxley  also,  in  his  "  Evidence  as  to  Man's 
Place  in  Nature,"  after  having  shown,  that  with  respect  to  the 
hand,  the  foot,  the  brain  and  all  other  anatomical  characters, 
man  differs  less  from  the  gorilla  than  the  gorilla  from  the 
monkey,  insisted  that  his  origin  must  be  sought  in  physical 
causes  alone,  and  suggested  his  probable  derivation  from  a 
man-like  ape,  on  the  principle  that  the  highest  faculties  of  feel- 
ing and  intellect  begin  to  germinate  in  the  lower  forms  of  life, 
as  in  the  dog,  the  cat,  and  the  parrot.  Dr.  Shaafhausen  of 
Bonn  had  already,  in  several  memoirs,  argued  that  the  devel- 
opment of  the  human  mind  from  a  state  of  animal  rudeness 
would  be  no  more  incredible  than  the  growth  of  a  chicken 
from  the  q^^,  and  had  agreed  with  Huxley,  in  citing  the  fa- 
mous Neanderthal  skull,  with  its  low  brow  and  small  cranium, 
as  evidence  that  primitive  man  was  more  ape-like  and  bestial 
than  any  extant  tribe  of  savages.  Professor  H?eckel  of  Ger- 
many, with  still  greater  boldness,  in  his  work  on  the  "Origin 
and  Genealogy  of  the  Human  Race,"  assuming  that  from  the 
womb  to  the  grave  man  recapitulates  all  animal  forms,  has 
declared  that  certain  rudimentary  bones  and  muscles  at  the 
base  of  the  vertebral  column,  afford  incontrovertible  proof  of 
his  descent  from  a  tailed  ancestor,  to  which  he  gives  the  zoo- 
logical name,  of  Pithecanthropos,  or  the  primitive  ape-man,  a 
woolly-haired,  long-headed  being,  of  blackish  color,  but  desti- 
tute as  yet  of  speech,  the  essentially  human  characteristic. 

Even  articulate  language  itself,  according  to  some  late 
philologists  of  the  school,  is  but  an  animal  faculty  of  expres- 
sion, which  has  been  developed  in  man  through  enormous  pe- 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Anthropology.  147 

riods,  relics  and  evidences  of  which  may  still  be  found  in  fossil 
dialects  and  rudimentary  letters.  Professor  Schleicher,  in 
treating  of  the  Significance  of  Language  in  the  Natural  His- 
tory of  Man,  has  referred  it  to  the  animal  stage  of  his  develop- 
ment as  a  capacity  increasing,  through  successive  generations, 
with  the  growth  of  the  brain  and  vocal  organs,  except  in  some 
speechless  beings,  such  as  the  anthropoid  apes,  who  have  been 
arrested  in  the  process  of  becoming  human  and  remained  sta- 
tionary. Dr.  Gustav  Yager,  as  a  zoologist,  has  argued  that 
speech  was  discovered  long  before  there  were  any  men,  in  the 
pairing-call  of  birds  and  gesture-language  of  monkeys,  who 
gradually  added  sounds  and  words  with  their  growing  stock 
of  ideas,  or  lapsed,  like  deaf  mutes,  into  a  voiceless  and  un- 
progressive  condition.  Clemence  Royer  declares  that  all  lan- 
guage, having  originated  in  mere  animal  cries  and  imitative 
sounds,  in  becoming  humanized  has  but  passed,  by  insensible 
transitions,  from  the  chatter  of  scolding  apes  to  the  comedies 
of  Shakspere  and  Moliere. 

In  like  manner,  a  large  body  of  distinguished  archaeologists 
are  endeavoring  to  trace  a  genetic  connection  between  the 
rude  arts  of  this  half-animal  savage  of  the  past  and  the 
whole  existing  civilization.  Boucher  de  Perthes,  author  of  a 
treatise  on  Antediluvian  Man  and  the  discoverer  of  the  cele- 
brated flint  axes  in  the  valley  of  the  Somme,  instead  of  dis- 
daining the  study  of  implements  so  simple  that  their  human 
design  has  been  doubted,  declared  that  the  first  man  who 
struck  one  pebble  against  another  to  give  it  more  regular 
form,  gave  the  first  blow  of  the  chisel  which  produced  the 
Minerva  and  all  the  marbles  of  the  Parthenon.  Louis  Figuier, 
though  he  repudiates  the  animal  origin  of  the  species,  has 
published  an  ingenious  treatise  on  Primitive  Man,  in  which  he 
depicts  the  first  European  as  a  Caucasian  savage,  advancing 
slowly  in  the  stone  age  through  the  epochs  of  the  mammoth, 
the  reindeer  and  the  horse,  into  the  bronze  and  iron  ages, 
among  the  rude  arts  which  precede  the  period  of  modern 
culture,  and  claims  a  similar  development  for  the  races  of  Asia, 
Africa  and  America.  Mr.  E.  D.  Stevens,  in  an  elaborate  work 
entitled  Flint  Chips,  a  Guide  to  Pre-historic  Archaeology,  has 
collected  an  immense  variety  of  facts  from  different  quarters 


14^  The  ScJiism  in  Anthropology.  [part  i. 

of  the  globe,  in  favor  of  the  position  that  the  most  barbarous 
state  is  a  condition  not  so  much  of  degradation  as  of  arrested 
or  retarded  progress,  the  starting-point  of  which  was  the  man- 
ufacture of  rude  stone  implements.  Mr.  Hadder  M.  Westropp, 
in  his  "  Pre-historic  Phases,"  has  ingeniously  classed  the  fir,  the 
deer,  and  the  hunter  with  the  palaeolithic  or  old  stone  epoch ; 
the  oak,  the  goat,  and  the  shepherd  with  the  neolithic  or  new 
stone  epoch ;  and  the  beech,  the  horse,  and  the  farmer  with 
the  bronze  epoch ;  citing  the  Mexicans  and  Peruvians  as  ex- 
amples of  nations  which  have  spontaneously  risen  through 
these  phases,  from  the  primitive  barbarism  to  a  high  degree 
of  civilization.  Sir  John  Lubbock,  having  descended,  in  his 
"  Pre-historic  Times"  through  the  different  human  epochs, 
among  the  sticks,  bones,  and  horns  of  the  most  ancient  stone 
period,  finds  all  mankind  in  a  savage  state,  out  of  which  a 
few  races  have  independently  raised  themselves  by  degrees 
and  toilsome  efforts ;  and  in  his  subsequent  work  on  the  "  Ori- 
gin of  Civilization "  has  collected  from  different  parts  of  the 
world  evidences  of  incipient  culture  in  the  most  barbarous 
tribes,  as  well  as  of  original  barbarism  in  the  most  civilized 
nations.  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  as  if  to  complete  these  various 
speculative  researches,  in  his  "  Geological  Evidences  of  the 
Antiquity  of  Man,"  has  abandoned  the  middle  ground  of  his 
earlier  works  and  arrayed  all  existing  anthropological  know- 
ledge in  favor  of  a  gradual  transmutation  of  species,  languages 
and  arts  throughout  the  whole  organic  series,  from  the  earliest 
mammalia  of  the  pliocene  period  up  to  the  civilized  man  of  our 
epoch.  And  assuredly,  whatever  may  be  thought  of  such  a 
genealogy,  or  of  the  likelihood  of  tracing  it,  wc  must  at  least 
grant  that  it  would  be  possible  now  to  construct  a  scale  of 
co-existing  animal,  savage  and  civilized  races,  ascending  from 
the  image  of  an  ape  toward  the  image  of  a  God. 

The  other  hypothesis,  however,  is  that  of  the  constancy  of 
species.  It  had  been  held  in  the  Church  from  the  time  of 
Augustine  that  plants,  animals  and  man  were  instantaneously 
created  full  grown  and  perfect,  several  thousand  years  ago, 
and  have  ever  since  continued  the  same,  each  after  its  kind ; 
and  the  early  naturalists,  proceeding  upon  this  dogma  as  an 
hypothesis,  not  only  distinguished  man  as  a  rational  and  reli- 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Anthropology.  149 

gious  animal,  but  maintained  the  absolute  invariability  of  his 
species,  even  in  its  anatomical  characters,  through  all  ages, 
climates  and  conditions.  Linnaeus  was  careful  to  insist  that 
every  genus  as  well  as  species  is  a  primordial  creation;  and 
classed  the  American,  European,  Asiatic  and  African  races  as 
mere  varieties  of  the  one  human  genus  of  bimana,  or  two- 
handed  animals.  Cuvier,  so  far  from  admitting  a  genealogi- 
cal connection  between  extinct  and  living  species,  held  that 
the  palaeontological  series  had  been  repeatedly  broken  by 
huge  cataclysms  or  sudden  deluges,  which  swept  all  existing 
animal  life  from  the  face  of  the  globe,  thus  precluding  the 
possibility  of  gradual  transmutation.  Count  Lacepede,  one  of 
the  professors  of  the  Museum  who  reported  upon  the  scientific 
spoils  of  the  Egyptian  campaign,  agreed  with  Cuvier  in  infer- 
ring the  immutability  of  species  from  the  identity  between 
mummied  and  living  specimens  of  the  cat,  the  dog  and  the 
bull;  and  when  Lamarck,  another  member  of  the  commission, 
urged  that  the  climate  of  Egypt  had  also  remained  unchanged, 
replied  that  the  same  species  might  now  be  found  in  all  other 
climates,  both  torrid  and  frigid,  from  Canada  to  Guinea,  con- 
tinuing to-day  as  they  were  three  thousand  years  ago,  when 
borne  in  the  sacred  processions  on  the  banks  of  the  Nile.  The 
French  naturalists  also  argued  that  domesticated  animals,  so  far 
from  changing  their  species,  retain  the  anatomical  structure 
belonging  to  them  in  a  wild  state,  under  all  mere  physiognomic 
differences,  and  only  vary  in  the  direction  of  original  predispo- 
sitions, the  different  races  of  the  cat,  the  dog  and  the  swine 
having  descended  from  the  tiger,  the  wolf  and  the  wild  boar; 
whilst  the  more  highly-educated  animals,  such  as  the  elephant 
and  the  parrot,  soon  reach  the  limits  of  their  improvability 
and  remain  stationary  for  generations.  It  was  likewise  shown 
that  hybrid  varieties  or  mixed  breeds  of  plants,  animals  and 
men  are  largely  due  to  artificial  contrivance,  rather  than  any- 
thing like  natural  selection,  and  soon  die  out  through  infer- 
tility of  their  offspring,  thus  disclosing  an  actual  barrier  to  the 
supposed  indefinite  transmutation.  Indeed,  the  weight  of  sci- 
entific authority  against  that  opinion  became  so  strong  that, 
until  its  revival  and  modification  by  Darwin,  it  was  discussed 
as  a  mere  curious  .speculation  or  tentative  hypothesis,  rather 


150  TJie  Schism  in  Antliropology.  [part  i. 

than  with  the  positive  tone  of  assured  knowledge.  The  Swiss 
naturalist,  Necker,  declared  that  nothing  less  than  the  shock 
of  a  comet  or  some  similar  disaster,  could  put  an  end  to  a 
species  so  long  as  the  planet  lasted.  Pictet,  the  eminent 
palaeontologist,  reasoning  from  the  present  backward  to  the 
former  course  of  nature,  from  the  known  stability  of  Egyptian 
species  for  thousands  of  years,  from  the  natural  obstacles  to 
mixed  breeds,  from  the  persistence  of  the  same  anatomical 
type  in  both  the  tame  and  the  wild  state,  and  from  the  influ- 
ence of  climate  in  destroying  no  less  than  modifying  animal 
races,  denied  even  the  Lamarkian  scale  of  successive  faunas  as 
well  as  the  passage  of  one  into  another,  and  favored  the  idea 
of  a  destruction  and  creation  of  species  at  each  catastrophic 
epoch  in  the  history  of  the   globe. 

And  the  same  general  reasoning  has  been  pressed  through 
all  the  anthropological  sciences  against  the  doctrine  of  hu- 
man evolution.  Distinguished  physiologists,  such  as  Valentin, 
Clark  and  Von  Baer,  have  maintained  that  the  foetal  develop- 
ment of  man,  so  far  from  proving  his  animal  pedigree,  merely 
reflects  that  unity  of  plan  which  has  pervaded  the  organic 
world  from  the  beginning.  And  more  recently,  in  his  last  lec- 
tures on  the  Method  of  Creation,  Professor  Agassiz  has  dis- 
tinctly repudiated  the  use  made  of  his  discoveries  by  Darwin, 
Hffickel  and  Martin;  averring  that  it  would  be  as  absurd  to 
argue  the  material  descent  of  cats  from  fishes  at  the  present 
day,  as  in  past  epochs,  because  of  any,  mere  ideal  corres- 
pondence in  their  foetal  development.  Leading  ethnologists 
such  as  Blumenbach,  Prichard  and  Lawrence,  long  ago  held 
that  both  savage  and  civilized  man,  like  the  wild  and  do- 
mesticated brute,  retain  the  same  anatomical  structure  in  all 
climates,  under  all  diversities  of  complexion  and  culture,  and 
moreover,  that  the  facial  angle  of  Camper,  ranging  through 
fifty  degrees  from  the  low  forehead  of  the  ape  to  the  vertical 
brow  of  the  Apollo,  though  it  may  indicate  a  scale  of  races, 
affords  no  proof  whatever  of  the  physical  evolution  of  one  out 
of  the  other,  but  rather  indicates,  as  the  French  Academy  at 
length  declared,  a  profound  gulf,  without  connection  or 
passage,  separating  the  human  species  from  every  other. 
Eminent  philologists    also   have  set  up  language  as  an  im- 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Anthropology.  1 5 1 

passable  barrier  to  such  development.  Wilhelm  Humboldt 
claimed  it  as  the  distinctive  faculty  in  man,  of  which  no  signs 
or  rudiments  can  be  found  in  the  whole  mute  creation.  Pro- 
fessor Max  Miiller,  in  his  Science  of  Language,  instead  of  re- 
ferring its  origin  to  mere  animal  cries  or  imitative  sounds, 
which  the  dog  and  the  parrot  share  with  man,  characterizes 
such  explanations  as  the  bow-wow  and  pooh-pooh  theories, 
and  traces  all  human  speech  to  the  faculty  of  reason  as  exer- 
cised in  selecting,  eliminating  and  combining  certain  phonetic 
types  of  thought,  which  are  the  roots  of  all  languages.  And 
the  archceologists,  until  quite  recently,  have  described  prim- 
itive man  as  lapsing  from  civilization,  through  golden,  silver, 
and  brazen  ages,  rather  than  rising  from  barbarism  through 
epochs  of  stone,  bronze  and  iron.  Champollion,  Remusat, 
Humboldt  and  Schoolcraft,  with  their  numerous  associates 
in  the  study  of  ancient  monuments  and  traditions,  were  in- 
clined to  regard  the  savage  tribes  of  Africa,  Europe  and 
America  as  but  the  dispersed  and  degenerate  descendants  of 
the  civilized  races  of  Asia,  such  as  the  Egyptian,  the  Indian 
and  the  Chinese.  The  distinguished  architect,  Mr.  James 
Ferguson,  in  his  work  on  the  Rude  Stone  Monuments  of  All 
Countries,  maintains  that  we  cannot  get  beyond  the  epoch  of 
the  pyramids;  the  cromlechs  at  Stonehenge  and  in  other  parts 
of  the  world  having  been  erected  by  partially  civilized  races 
within  the  first  ten  centuries  of  the  Christian  era.  Professor 
Piazzi  Smyth  of  Edinburgh,  in  a  recent  work  entitled  Anti- 
quity of  Intellectual  Man,  according  to  his  remarkable  theory 
of  the  astronomical  design  and  physical  structure  of  the  Great 
Pyramid,  dates  the  historic  epoch  from  a  high  state  of  scien- 
tific knowledge,  about  six  or  seven  thousand  years  ago,  and 
argues,  from  the  premises  of  Lyell  himself,  that  no  other  Human 
remains  than  mere  flint-chips  and  rude  pottery,  no  civil  monu- 
ments, such  as  coins,  machines,  statues,  have  been  found  in 
the  caves  and  river-banks  which  archaeologists  are  so  busily 
exploring.  The  so-called  archaeo-geologists  have  also  been 
met  upon  their  oWn  ground.  Quatrefages,  Pruncr-Rcy  and 
Dawson  have  maintained  that  the  famous  Neanderthal  skull 
is  simply  exceptional,  if  not  already  set  aside  by  the  older 
crania  of  Borreby,  Engis  and  Mentone  which  indicate  the  exist- 


152  TJie  ScJiisni  in  Anthropology.  [part  i. 

ing  Caucasian  type  of  high  forehead  and  steep  facial  angle; 
and  that  the  most  ancient  remains  of  man  which  have  yet 
been  found,  so  far  from  proving  his  bestial  origin,  give  hints 
of  religious  as  well  as  savage  ideas  and  manners. 

To  all  this  evidence  against  development  has  been  added 
the  jDroof  of  a  positive  degeneracy.  Dr.  Waitz  admits,  in  his 
Anthropology  of  Primitive  Peoples,  that  the  first  elements  of 
civilization  always  appear  as  communicated  from  one  people  to 
another,  and  of  none  can  it  be  proved  how,  when  and  where 
they  became  civilized  by  their  own  inherent  power.  The  Duke 
of  Arg}'le  has  lately  published  a  treatise  on  Primeval  Man,  in 
opposition  to  the  views  of  Lubbock,  maintaining  that  the  stone, 
bronze  and  iron  epochs  overlap  and  run  into  each  other  within 
the  historic  period,  and  the  loss  of  ancient  arts,  and  especially 
of  religion,  by  such  tribes  as  the  Eskimo  and  the  Hottentot, 
may  have  been  due  to  adverse  climate  ^nd  the  general  cor- 
ruptibility of  human  nature.  Count  Gobineau,  in  his  work  on 
Moral  and  Intellectual  Diversity  of  Races,  argues  that  as  a 
dunce  and  a  genius  may  be  born  of  the  same  parents,  certain 
branches  of  the  human  family  are  in  a  state  of  permanent  in- 
feriority, whilst  others  show  a  capacity  for  social  improvement 
and  civilization.  Hugh  Miller  describes  such  inferior  races  as 
varieties  which  have  lapsed  from  the  Caucasian  type,  fallen, 
hopelessly  lost,  and  as  races  doomed,  after  a  few  generations, 
to  disappear.  Mr.  Westropp  indeed  acknowledges,  not  merely 
that  there  are  some  instances  of  degraded  races,  but  that  all 
civilized  races  are  destined  to  a  course  of  decline  as  well  as 
progress,  under  immutable  physiological  laws.  And  if  the 
notion  of  transmutation  be  thus  separated  from  that  of  pro- 
gression, or  if  it  is  admitted  that  successive  species,  languages 
and  arts  have  been  produced  and  extinguished  in  a  series 
with  an  ever-advancing  type,  we  can  readily  imagine  the  scale 
of  civilized  and  savage  humanity  descending  as  well  as  ascend- 
ing between  the  image  of  a  God  and  the  image  of  an  ape. 

As  to  the  unity  of  mankind,  there  were  also  two  hypotheses. 
According  to  the  older  view,  all  races  have  descended  from 
one  pair.  It  had  been  the  ancient  teaching  of  the  Church, 
that  Adam  and  Eve  were  created  in  the  garden  of  Eden  as  the 
first  parents  of  the  whole  human   family ;  and  the  early  an- 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Anthropology.  153 

thropologists  had  been  accustomed  to  trace  back  to  them, 
through  the  three  sons  of  Noah,  the  second  father  of  man- 
kind, all  the  nations,  languages  and  arts  which  had  overspread 
the  earth.  Adelung,  thus  proceeding  upon  the  Mosaic  eth- 
nography, had  imagined  the  first  land  divided  from  the  sea  to 
have  been  the  high  table-ground  of  Central  Asia,  where  the 
Creator  placed  the  first  human  pair  on  the  gentle  slopes  of 
Cashmere,  between  snowy  mountains  and  grassy  plains, 
drained  by  rivers  to  the  north,  south,  east  and  west,  affording 
every  variety-of  climate,  plant  and  animal,  and  thus  uniting  all 
the  characters  of  Paradise,  the  cradle  of  mankind.  Linnaeus, 
in  a  more  scientific  spirit,  had  conceived  of  an  original  con- 
tinent, emerging  from  the  universal  ocean,  like  an  island  moun- 
tain, belted  w^th  climatic  zones,  stocked  with  the  first  ances- 
tors of  all  plants,  beasts  and  birds,  and  thus  serving  as  a  sort 
of  central  nursery,  from  whence,  as  the  earth  dried  and  be- 
came habitable,  were  propagated  from  one  pair  the  different 
varieties  of  mankind,  together  with  the  floras  and  faunas  found 
associated  with  them  in  appropriate  climates.  Blumenbach 
had  declared  that  his  five  great  branches  of  the  human  family, 
the  Mongolian,  Malay,  European,  Ethiopian  and  American, 
were  no  more  distinct  species  than  the  numerous  breeds  of 
domestic  swine,  which  all  naturalists  admitted  were  descended 
from  the  wild  boar.  Cuvier  also  had  referred  his  three  varie- 
ties of  mankind,  the  Caucasian,  Mongolian  and  Ethiopian,  to 
a  single  Asiatic  pair,  maintaining  that  their  white,  yellow  and 
black  complexions  are  due  to  climate,  food  and  habit,  whilst 
their  original  unity  was  indicated  by  anatomical  sameness  and 
fertile    intermarriages. 

And  later  ethnologists-,  with  increasing  knowledge,  made 
such  oneness  of  nature  and  descent  a  matter  of  special  study 
and  vindication.  Prichard,  the  first  of  English  authorities  on 
the  question,  in  his  elaborate  volumes,  argued  physiologically, 
that  neither  the  color  of  the  skin,  nor  the  texture  of  the  hair, 
nor  the  shape  of  the  skull,  nor  the  angle  of  the  face,  nor  the 
size  of  the  brain,  however  endlessly  varied,  can  constitute  dif- 
ferent human  species  ;  philologically,  that  the  consanguinity 
and  common  descent  of  races  are  proved  by  the  affinity  and 
common  origin  of  languages ;  and  historically  or  archa^olog- 
u 


154  l^^'-'^  ScJiism  in  Anthropology.  [part  i. 

ically,  that  the  memorials,  traditions  and  customs  of  all  na- 
tions converge  backward,  from  Africa,  Europe  and  America, 
toward  the  same  birth-place  and  ancestry,  in  Eastern  Asia. 
Professor  Muller,  the  great  German  physiologist,  reasoned, 
from  the  wide  geographical  distribution  of  the  same  plants  and 
animals  in  such  endless  varieties,  that  all  human  races,  from 
the  Negro  to  the  Greek,  belong  to  one  sole  species,  propa- 
gated by  the  union  of  two  individuals,  though  he  doubted 
whether  their  origin  in  the  same  pair  can  now  be  determined 
from  experience.  Dr.  Bachman,  the  chief  of  the  American 
school,  in  his  work  on  the  Unity  of  the  Human  Race,  saga- 
ciously observed  that  cultivated  plants,  such  as  the  vine,  rice 
and  wheat,  and  domesticated  animals,  such  as  the  horse,  the 
sheep  and  the  dog,  now  everywhere  associated  with  man,  also 
originated  with  him  at  the  same  geographical  centre  in  the 
eastern  continent,  and  that  to  suppose  him  incapable  of  coping 
with  the  most  opposite  climates,  would  make  him  generically 
inferior  to  certain  animal  species,  which  have  spread  from  pole 
to  pole  around  the  globe.  And  numerous  other  similar  argu- 
ments may  be  found  in  the  works  of  leading  ph}'siologists, 
such  as  Lawrence,  Carpenter,  Owen  of  England,  Tiedman, 
Weber,  and  Vrolick  of  Germany,  Flourens  and  Quatrefages 
of  France,  and  Pickering,  Hall  and  Cabell  of  the  United  States. 
The  growing  evidence  of  philology  has  also  been  made  to 
corroborate  the  physical  unity  of  the  species.  The  two  Hum- 
boldts  very  early  recognized  the  comparative  study  of  lan- 
guages as  a  method,  surer  than  either  history  or  tradition,  for 
ascertaining  the  affinity  of  the  most  widely  separated  nations, 
retracing  the  course  of  their  migrations,  determining  their 
relative  degrees  of  approximation  to  the  primitive  race  and 
speech,  and  ultimately  solving  the  whole  problem  of  their  dis- 
persion from  a  common  point  of  radiation.  Dr.  Latham,  pro- 
ceeding upon  such  principles  in  his  elaborate  works  on  the 
varieties  and  migrations  of  mankind,  has  grouped  the  three 
great  races,  Mongolidae,  Atlantidae  and  Japetidae,  with  three 
corresponding  species  of  language,  the  monosyllabic  dialects 
of  Asia  and  America,  the  agglutinate  dialects  of  Africa,  and 
the  amalgamate  dialects  of  Europe,  as  in  different  stages  of 
geographical  and  linguistic  departure  from  the  one  primitive 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Anthropology.  155 

Asiatic  race  and  tongue.  Professor  Max  Miiller,  in  his  Sci- 
ence of  Language,  whilst  urging  that  the  classification  of  races 
and  languages  should  be  independent  of  each  other,  holds  to 
the  common  origin  of  both  on  separate  grounds,  and  argues 
the  possibility  of  tracing  all  existing  dialects  through  the 
amalgamate,  agglutinate,  and  radical  stages  back  to  one  primi- 
tive speech,  if  not  to  one  pair.  The  Chevalier  Bunsen  repu- 
diated the  notion  that  allied  languages  and  races  are  not  his- 
torically connected,  but  only  ideally  analogous,  and  in  his 
Philosophy  of  Universal  History  endeavored  to  join  together 
the  African,  the  Polynesian,  the  American  and  the  European 
with  the  Asiatic  dialects  as  respectively  but  degraded,  eccen- 
tric, arrested  and  advanced  formations,  which  have  proceeded, 
with  migratory  races,  from  the  original  seat  of  mankind,  in 
northern  Asia. 

And  the  archaeologists,  in  like  manner,  have  long  been  en- 
deavoring to  trace  the  arts,  as  well  as  languages  and  races,  to 
the  same  centre  as  the  cradle  of  civilization.  Authorities  in 
the  study  of  ancient  history,  such  as  Niebuhr,  Wilkinson, 
Mommsen  and  Rawlinson,  have  derived  all  the  culture,  science 
and  religion  of  Europe  from  Central  Asia,  through  Egypt, 
Assyria  and  Greece ;  whilst  Oriental  scholars,  such  as  Schle- 
gel.  Hue  and  Paravey,  have  referred  to  the  same  source  the 
traditions  of  Hindostan,  Thibet  and  China.  American  anti- 
quarians, such  as  Schoolcraft,  Catlin  and  Prescott  have  fol- 
lowed the  Mongolian  races  from  Japan  across  Behring  Straits 
and  through  the  Pacific  islands  to  North  and  South  America, 
and  there  sought  to  identify  the  Indian  mounds  and  Mexi- 
can temples  as  of  the  sanie  Asiatic  origin  with  the  cromlechs 
of  Britain  and  the  pyramids  of  Egypt.  And  other  explorers, 
such  as  Ellis,  Lang,  Bradford  and  Pinkerton,  reasoning  from 
a  similarity  of  traditions  and  customs,  have  traced  the  Ameri- 
can aborigines  from  Asia,  through  Polynesia  and  Australia, 
over  the  widest  part  of  the  Pacific,  and  even  from  Africa 
as  well  as  Europe,  across  the  Atlantic,  drifting  in  the  kyac 
and  the  canoe,  long  before  the  modern  voyages  of  Columbus 
and  Magellan.  Rector  Ranch  of  Augsburg,  among  other  val- 
uable anthropological  studies  on  the  Unity  of  Mankind,  has 
collected  arid  digested  the  evidence  of  modern  travellers,  such 


ic6  Tlie  Schism  in  Anthropology.  [parti. 

as  Barrow,  Davis,  Assal,  D'Urville,  Becchy,  Diefifenbach,  Jac- 
quinot,  Wallace,  in  favor  of  the  early  peopling  of  the  whole 
earth  from  the  same  geographical  centre.  To  all  this  array  of 
physiological,  linguistic  and  antiquarian  testimony,  may  be 
added  that  of  eminent  transmutationists,  such  as  Lyell,  Haeckel 
and  Pouchet,  who  are  ready  to  admit  the  possible  and  even 
probable  descent  of  races  from  one  pair,  provided  only  the 
popular  chronology  be  sufficiently  lengthened  to  allow  of  a 
secular  development  from  primitive  animality  through  the 
stone,  bronze  and  iron  epochs  of  pre-historic  barbarism. 

According  to  the  polygenists,  however,  different  races  are 
descended  from  different  pairs.  And  the  opinion,  though  not 
in  a  scientific  form,  is  as  ancient  as  its  opposite.  It  was  the 
boast  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans  that  they  were  autochtho- 
nous, or  terrigenous,  sons  of  the  soil,  whilst  all  foreigners  dif- 
fered in  nothing  from  the  brutes.  Plato  excluded  barbarians 
from  his  ideal  republic,  and  Galen  would  not  prescribe  for  the 
preservation  of  their  young  as  being  no  better  than  the  buffalo 
and  the  wild  boar.  But  with  the  spread  of  Christianity,  as  a 
gospel  for  Jew  and  Gentile,  Greek  and  Barbarian,  this  in- 
human doctrine  disappeared,  and  the  common  origin  of  races 
became  so  essential  to  orthodoxy,  that  Lactantius  and  Augus- 
tine even  denied  the  notion  of  antipodes,  because  of  its  sup- 
posed  inconsistency  with  the  descent  of  all  men  from  the  same 
parents.  It  was  not  until  geographical  discovery  had  proved 
the  round  form  of  the  earth,  and  made  known  to  Christendom 
other  and  widely  different  races,  concerning  which  history  and 
Scripture  appeared  silerit,  that  Paracelsus  scandalized  his  con- 
temporaries by  asserting  that  there  must  have  been  an  Ameri- 
can Adam  besides  the  Asiatic.  And  the  scepticism  grew 
scientific  as  the  researches  of  naturalists  brought  to  view  the 
analogies  afforded  by  indigenous  plants  and  animals.  Buffon 
had  called  attention  to  the  great  natural  barriers  to  a  geo- 
graphical distribution  from  one  centre,  existing  in  wide  oceans 
and  adverse  climates,  as  confirmed  by  the  specific  differences 
between  American  and  Asiatic  quadrupeds  in  the  same  lati- 
tude. Cuvier  had  shown  from  the  evidence  of  palreontology 
that  some  of  the  domestic  animals  of  Europe,  such  as  the  ox, 
could  not  have  originated  from  the  paradisaic  centre  in  Asia. 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Anthropology.  IS7 

De  Candolle,  in  his  classical  treatise  on  Botanical  Geography, 
had  divided  the  earth  into  stations  and  habitations  of  plants, 
or  localities  and  continents,  each  with  its  own  peculiar  vege- 
tation termed  a  flora.  Pennant  and  Waterhouse  had  parcelled 
out  over  the  globe  similar  zoological  provinces,  each  in- 
habited by  its  own  nation  of  quadrupeds  termed  a  fauna. 
Professor  Forbes,  in  some  memoirs  on  the  connection  of  the 
British  flora  and  fauna  with  the  glacial  epoch,  had  already 
announced  his  theory  of  specific  centres  or  foci  of  creation, 
at  which  each  species  of  plant  and  animal  is  supposed  to  have 
emanated  from  one  pair  and  remained  within  the  same  area, 
except  as  dislocated  by  migration  and  geological  changes. 
Linnseus,  Bufron,and  Blumenbach,  moreover,  as  if  unconscious- 
ly anticipating  such  views  had  long  before  made  geographi- 
cal classifications  of  mankind,  treating  the  several  continents 
of  Europe,  Asia,  Africa,  and. America,  as  distinct  ethnological 
kingdoms,  each  affording  its  own  variety  or  race  of  men. 

And  now  it  was  but  a  logical  step  further,  to  consider  the 
human  species  in  different  regions,  as  indigenous  as  the 
floras  and  faunas  with  which  it  is  found  connected.  Eberhard, 
in  a  treatise  on  the  Human  Races,  seems  to  have  been  the 
first  to  refer  the  five  continental  races  of  Blumenbach  to  as 
many  botanical  and  zoological  provinces,  each  of  which  had 
brought  forth  a  human  pair  as  the  keystone  of  its  whole  organic 
world.  Professor  Agassiz,  about  the  same  time,  in  a  memoir  on 
the  Geography  of  Animals  and  in  his  "  Principles  of  Zoology," 
broached  the  idea  that  men  are  autochthons,  originating,  like 
plants  and  animals,  on  the  soil  where  they  are  found,  but  un- 
like them  created  in  one  and  the  same  species,  or  after  the 
same  primordial  type;  and  subsequently,  in  his  "Sketch  of 
the  Natural  Provinces  of  the  Animal  World,  and  their  relation 
to  the  different  Types  of  Man,"  he  divided  the  earth's  surface 
into  eight  great  zoological  realms,  producing  as  many  distinct 
human  species,  though  all  with  the  same  intellectual  and 
moral  nature.  Doctors  Nott  and  Gliddon  embodied  the  views 
of  Agassiz  in  their  "Types  of  Mankind,"  and  pushed  them  to' 
their  logical  results,  with  still  more  boldness  in  their  volume. 
"  The  Indigenous  Races  of  the  Earth,"  collecting  scientific 
authorities,  with  a  cyclopaediac  range,  from  every  related  de- 


158  TJic  Schism  in  Antliropology.  [part  i. 

partment  in  favor  of  a  multiple  origin  of  the  human  species. 
Dr.  Morton,  the  chief  authority  on  American  crania,  in  the  last 
named  work,  is  cited  as  averring  that  the  Indians  are  the 
true  autochthons  or  primeval  inhabitants  of  this  vast  continent, 
on  the  ground  that  our  species  had  its  origin  not  in  one  but 
in  many  creations,  which  diverging  from  their  primitive  cen- 
tres have  met  and  amalgamated  as  we  now  find  them,  with  the 
extremes  connected  together  by  intermediate  links  of  organiza- 
tion. 

And  besides  the  testimony  of  such  professed  ethnolo- 
gists, special  monogtephs  and  arguments  have  been  brought 
from  other  connected  sciences.  Physiology  is  made  to  testify 
to  the  original  diversity  of  species.  Rudolphi,  Burmeister,  and 
Vogt  suggested  that  the  descent  of  millions  of  men  from  one 
pair  in  so  short  a  time  would  imply  incredible  fertility,  as  well 
as  leave  the  important  matter  of  peopling  the  earth  to  mere 
hazard  in  distant  regions  and  adverse  climates.  Desm.oulins, 
Borey,  and  Hamilton  Smith  have  reasoned  from  the  phe- 
nomena of  hybridity  in  animal  species,  that  the  existing  mix- 
ture of  human  races  does  not  imply  their  common  parentage, 
but  only  a  higher  type  of  fecundity.  Knox,  Baudin,  Kennedy 
and  Hunt  have  referred  to  the  difficult  acclimatization  of  the 
English  in  India  and  America,  as  proof  that  the  different  con- 
tinental races  are  confined  within  climatic  barriers  which  they 
cannot  overleap  without  more  or  less  speedy  degeneracy  and 
extinction.  And  other  physiologists,  such  as  Virey,  Meigs 
and  Brown,  have  argued  positively  for  their  diverse  origin 
from  differences  of  complexion,  as  the  white,  the  yellow,  and 
the  black  ;  of  skull,  as  the  long,  the  broad,  and  the  round ; 
and  of  brow,  as  high,  low,  and  medium;  whilst  some,  with 
Gobineau  and  Pouchet,  have  thrown  into  the  scale  a  sup- 
posed psychical  diversity  of  species,  indicated  by  the  mass  or 
folds  of  the  brain,  and  expressed  in  different  mental  capacities. 

Philology  has  been  cited  as  a  witness  for  the  plural  origin 
of  languages  as  well  as  races.  Professor  Agassiz,  assuming 
all  language  to  be  an  animal  function  predetermined  by  the 
vocal  organs,  argued  from  their  structure  in  different  races, 
that  the  primitive  tongues  of  men  were  as  distinct  as  the 
scream  of  the  eagle,  the  song  of  the  thrush,  and  the  quack  of 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Anthropology.  159 

the  duck.  M.  Alfred  Maury,  whilst  admitting  that  allied 
tongues  indicate  allied  races,  denied  that  they  point  to  a 
common  origin  for  either,  on  the  ground  that  the  classification 
of  races  must  precede  that  of  tongues,  and  that  any  analogies 
between  them,  so  far  from  indicating  the  same  descent,  are  due 
to  mere  similarity  of  mental  organization  and  condition,  the 
same  thoughts  everywhere  spontaneously  expressing  them- 
selves in  the  same  sounds  and  words.  Professor  Pott,  the  dis- 
tinguished German  etymologist,  has  written  a  treatise  on  the 
"  Diversity  of  Human  Races,"  based  upon  the  assumption 
of  a  multiple  origin  of  languages  at  points  totally  independent 
of  each  other.  Mr.  Crawfurd,  late  British  Resident  at  the 
Court  of  Java,  and  author  of  numerous  learned  works  on  the 
Indian  Archipelago,  in  opposition  to  Humboldt's  view  of  a 
parent  tongue  for  the  Malayo-Polynesian  races,  maintained 
their  separate  origin,  and  explained  any  words  common  to  their 
several  dialects  as  the  mere  effect  of  maritime  adventure  and 
commerce  ;  such  as  are  now  taking  place  on  a  larger  scale 
among  the  more  confused  civilized  languages.  And  Profes- 
sor Schleicher  has  distinguished  certain  language-provinces 
over  the  earth,  like  those  of  the  botanist  and  zoologist,  group- 
ing together  as  an  example  the  aboriginal  dialects  of  Amer- 
ica, which,  unlike  the  mixed  tongues  of  Europe  and  Asia, 
having  been  long  secluded,  still  appear  as  indigenous  as  the 
tribes,  animals,  and  plants  where  they  are  spoken. 

Archaeology,  too,  has  been  summoned  to  prove  the  plural 
origin  of  arts  as  well  as  races.  Francis  Pulsky,  one  of  the  col- 
laborators of  Nott  and  Gliddon,  in  his  memoir  entitled  "  Icono- 
graphic  Researches  on  Human  Races  and  their  Arts,"  has 
endeavored  to  show  that  races  are  artistical  in  different  de- 
grees, and  retain  their  respective  arts,  whether  rude  or  fine, 
as  indigenous  products  which  cannot  be  transplanted  or  amal- 
gamated. Mr.  Buckle,  in  his  History  of  Civilization,  has  illus- 
trated the  predominance  of  climate  and  locality  over  race  by 
contrasting  the  Mongolian  hordes  of  Northern  Asia,  with 
their  kinsmen  in  Persia  and  China,  who  have  developed 
the  most  flourishing  monarchies  of  the  old  world.  Tylor,  in 
his  "  Early  History  of  Mankind,"  contends  for  similar  begin- 
nings of  language,  writing,  and  culture  in  all  parts  of  the  globe, 


l6o  TJic  Schism  in  Anthropology.  [part  i. 

insisting  that  the  ancient  American  architecture,  instead  of 
betraying  an  Asiatic  origin  is  native  to  the  soil,  and  merely- 
analogous  to  any  that  may  be  found  elsewhere.  South 
American  antiquarians,  such  as  Acosta,  Waldeck  and  Dupaix, 
have  ingeniously  argued  from  the  accumulated  garden  mould, 
the  successive  tree-growths  and  the  scattered  monumental 
ruins  of  Peru  and  Yucatan,  for  an  antiquity  dating  beyond  the 
Egyptian  Pyramids,  toward  the  highest  pre-diluvian  epochs. 
North  American  archaeologists,  such  as  Romans,  Gallatin, 
and  Squiers,  have  been  inclined  to  treat  the  Mississippi  earth- 
works and  Mexican  ruins  as  purely  native  productions  of  in- 
definite age,  bearing  only  accidental  resemblance  to  the  Celtic 
cromlechs  and  Hindoo  temples.  And  some  European  scho- 
lars, such  as  Klaproth,  and  Waitz,  from  the  similarity  of 
Asiatic  and  American  traditions  and  customs  have  simply 
claimed  the  new  world  as  the  early  home  of  the  Mongol  races 
of  Polynesia  and  Western  Asia,  and  indeed  as  the  cradle  of 
civilization  for  the  other  continents.  Dr.  Augustus  le  Plon- 
geon,  in  a  memoir  on  the  "Vestiges  of  Antiquity,"  read  be- 
fore the  New  York  Geographical  Society,  has  proposed  to 
explain  the  archaic  resemblances  among  the  pre-historic  races 
of  both  hemispheres,  on  the  geological  hypothesis  that  this 
continent  in  its  tropical  regions  became  the  seat  of  a  primitive 
civilization  which  has  ebbed  and  flowed  around  the  globe, 
with  the  secular  motion  of  the  earth's  axis,  from  America  to 
Europe  and  from  Europe  back  to  America.  In  connexion  with 
all  this  ethnological,  philological,  and  archaeological  evidence, 
it  should  be  borne  in  mind,  that  leading  progressionists,  such 
as  Agassiz,  Gobineau,  and  Quatrefages,  whilst  admitting  a  plu- 
rality of  human  races,  deny  their  animal  origin,  and  still  ad- 
here to  the  ideal,  moral  and  religious  unity  of  the  species. 

As  to  the  destiny  of  mankind,  there  have  also  been  two 
opposite  presentiments.  One  class  of  anthropologists  has 
looked  for  an  indefinite  improvement  of  the  species.  It  had 
been  an  ancient  prediction  among  both  the  Jews  and  Gen- 
tiles, that  man,  with  the  earth  he  inhabits,  is  to  be  renewed 
and  his  lost  Paradise  .regained ;  whilst  some  modern  Chris- 
tians, as  we  shall  see,  have  so  literally  interpreted  the  Messi- 
anic prophecies   as  to  anticipate   something  like  a  physical 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Anthropology.  l6i 

transformation  of  plants,  animals,  races,  languages  and  arts  at 
the  second  coming  of  Christ  to  renovate  both  nature  and  hu- 
manity. And  this  view,  without  its  miraculous  element, 
has  occasionally  assumed  a  color  of  scientific  prevision.  It 
has  been  suggested,  and  even  argued,  by  the  evolutionists  of 
an  advanced  school,  that  the  development  of  the  globe,  with 
improving  climates,  floras  and  faunas,  favors  a  corresponding 
development  of  the  human  species  toward  a  higher  physical 
type  than  the  animal  and  savage  tribes,  out  of  which  its  civil- 
ized races  have  already  emerged.  Sir  Charles  Lycll,  remark- 
ing upon  the  geological  changes  which  affect  climate  and  spe- 
cies, has  observed  that  man,  in  proportion  as  he  occupies  the 
earth,  displaces  certain  animal  tribes,  as  they  have  before  dis- 
placed their  ruder  predecessors,  and  that  a  similar  predomi- 
nance of  civilized  over  savage  races  renders  it  inevitable  that 
in  the  course  of  a  few  centuries  the  Indians  of  North  America 
and  the  Hottentots  of  New  Holland  will  be  remembered  only 
in  poetry  or  history.  Mr.'  Alfred  Wallace,  consistently  with 
his  hypothesis,  has  argued  that  we  may  foresee  a  time  when 
only  cultivated  plants  and  domesticated  animals  will  remain, 
and  human  selection  will  have  replaced  natural  selection  every- 
where except  in  the  sea,  in  order  that  man  may  acquire  his 
proper  dominion  over  the  whole  habitable  world.  Mr.  Dar- 
win also  has  remarked,  in  accordance  with  his  doctrine  of 
survival,  that  human  races,  like  the  different  animal  species, 
are  evolved  one  out  of  another,  the  weaker  ever  exterminated 
by  the  stronger;  and  his  more  eager  disciples  are  already 
predicting  an  era  when  savage  and  barbarous  peoples,  no 
longer  able  to  maintain  themselves  in  the  struggle  of  exist- 
ence, will  have  faded  away  before  the  progress  of  civilized 
races  throughout  the  earth.  Dr.  Biichner  especially,  in  his 
work  on  the  Man  of  the  Present,  Past  and  Future,  has  col- 
lected the  testimony  of  the  school  for  a  sort  of  physiological 
prognosis  of  the  human  species,  as  it  will  appear,  at  the  close 
of  the  whole  organic  development  of  the  planet,  in  an  artificial 
Paradise  or  earthly  heaven  of  its  own  creation. 

Besides  such  systematic  treatises,  there  have  been  bold 
conjectures  and  brilliant  surmises  to  the  same  effect,  gathered 
from  the  different  anthropological  sciences.     Some  writers,  on 


1 62  The  Schism  in  Anthropology.  [part  i. 

physiological  grounds,  have  predicted  ever-improving  races. 
Tiedemann,  Gregory  and  Armstead  have  written  arguments  and 
appeals  in  favor  of  the  indefinite  improvability  of  the  Negro; 
citino-  examples  of  individuals  of  that  race  who  have  attained 
the  greatest  proficiency  in  the  arts  and  sciences.  Crawford, 
Krieg  and  Cooley  have  argued  that  miscegenation,  or  the 
mingling  of  different  races,  instead  of  causing  any  of  them  to 
deteriorate,  elevates  the  lower  to  a  higher  degree  of  physical 
and  mental  vigor,  as  may  be  seen  in  the  successive  reinforce- 
ment of  the  European  nations  and  the  American  colonies 
with  Roman,  Celtic,  Norman  and  Saxon  blood.  Francis  Gal- 
ton,  in  his  essay  on  "  Hereditary  Genius,"  has  framed  a  sta- 
tistical argument  to  prove  that  the  qualities  of  great  men,  in- 
stead of  being  accidental  or  anomalous  phenomena,  are  di- 
rectly traceable  to  parentage  and  ancestry,  and  transmissible, 
with  augmented  power,  by  means  of  judicious  marriages;  re- 
ferring to  ancient  Athens  as  a  city  stocked  with  a  breed  of 
heroes,  whilst  modern  Europe  has  lost  its  race  of  saints 
through  the  celibacy  of  the  clergy.  Dr.  Prichard,  from  a 
historical  comparison  of  British  skulls  at  different  periods, 
has  concluded  that  the  present  race  of  Englishmen  have  larger 
brain-cases  than  their  forefathers.  Carl  Vogt  professes  to  find 
in  the  brain  itself,  as  the  organ  of  thought  and  culture,  a  ca- 
pacity of  indefinite  improvement,  both  in  structure  and  func- 
tion, which,  under  the  laws  of  descent  and  training,  may  be 
propagated,  with  cumulative  force,  from  generation  to  genera- 
tion. And  Mr.  J.  W.  Jackson,  treating  our .  species  as  only 
the  commencement  of  a  new  zoological  order  of  mammalia, 
has  ventured  to  prognosticate  the  coming  man  as  a  biped  of 
the  bird-type,  covered  with  feathers,  as  if  to  realize,  it  would 
seem,  the  ideal  angel  of  Eastern  fancy. 

Philological  writers  have  predicted  ever-improving  lan- 
guages as  well  as  races.  Leibnitz,  the  Empress  Catherine  and 
the  Adelungs  seem  to  have  had  before  their  minds,  as  a  possi- 
ble fruit  of  their  comparative  studies,  the  discovery  or  inven- 
tion of  a  common  universal  language,  hidden  amid  the  con- 
fused tongues  of  mankind,  or  to  be  constructed,  by  international 
intercourse,  as  a  bond  of  ultimate  unity.  Eunsen,  Lepsius  and 
Miillcr,  in  the  year  1854,  united  with  other  distinguished  lin- 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Anthropology.  163 

guists  in  a  conference  called  to  devise  a  Standard  Universal 
Alphabet,  in  which  the  different  vocal  sounds  shall  be  defined 
physiologically,  according  to  the  organs  of  speech,  as  guttur- 
als, dentals  and  labials,  and  expressed  typographically  by  the 
fewest  possible  letters,  to  serve  as  an  instrument  of  scientific 
study  and  human  advancement.  Schleicher,  Grimm  and 
Bleek,  consistently  with  their  view  of  language  as  an  animal 
faculty  of  gradual  growth,  would  look  forward  to  its  pro- 
gressive improvement  with  the  improvement  of  the  brain  and 
larynx,  or  increasing  capacity  of  thought  and  expression  in 
coming  generations.  Professor  Whitney,  of  Yale  College,  is  such 
an  enthusiastic  admirer  of  English,  that  he  has  declared  in  his 
"  Study  of  Language,"  his  belief  that  it  will  not  be  found  un- 
equal to  anything  the  future  may  require  of  it,  even  though  it 
should  become  the  leading  tongue  of  civilized  humanity. 
Other  writers,  on  archaeological  and  geographical  grounds 
have  anticipated  ever-improving  arts  as  well  as  races  and 
tongues,  Maclaren,  in  the  article  on  America  in  the  En- 
cyclopedia Britannica,  has  intimated,  that  the  new  continent, 
though  not  half  the  size  of  the  old,  were  its  resources  as  fully 
developed,  would  be  capable  of  sustaining  five  times  the 
present  population  of  the  globe.  Professor  Marsh,  in  his 
"Man  and  the  Earth,"  treating  of  physical  geography  as 
modified  by  human  action,  has  projected  still  further  and 
grander  changes,  to  be  brought  about  by  vast  industrial  en- 
terprises, reclaiming  barren  and  insalubrious  regions,  con- 
necting the  commerce  of  distant  oceans,  as  at  Suez  and  Da- 
rien,  and  even  improving  the  climates  of  the  different  conti- 
nents. Mr.  Carey,  in  his  "  Social  Science,"  reasoning  from 
the  principles  of  agriculture,  chemistry  and  political  economy, 
in  opposition  to  Malthus,  maintains  that  the  treasury  of  nature 
is  unlimited,  the  supply  ever  increasing  with  the  demand,  and 
the  demand  ever  increasing  with  the  multiplication  and  com- 
bination of  mankind.  Dr.  Shaaf  hausen  argues  that  in  propor- 
tion as  man  rises  out  of  the  animal  state,  he  emancipates  him- 
self from  all  climatic  and  local  conditions,  becomes  concordant 
and  cosmopolitan  in  his  culture,  and  steadily  approximates  an 
ideal  unity  of  thought,  feeling  and  endeavor  which,  though  it 
could  not  have  existed  at  the  origin  of  the  race,  now  shines 


164  The  Schism  in  Anthropology.  [part  i. 

before  us  as  the  brilliant  goal  of  the  human  development. 
And  still  bolder  prognosticators,  such  as  Jackson,  Figuier  and 
Flammarion,  leaving  the  earth  as  at  length  to  be  survived  or 
outgrown  by  man,  have  fancied  the  human  species,  under 
progressive  laws,  with  new  physiological  characters,  migrating 
to  the  sun,  for  a  higher  cosmical  stage  of  life,  and  thence  even 
to  the  stars,  as  other  suns,  of  which  the  planets  are  but  em- 
bryos. There  is  certainly  ample  scope  in  such  heavenly 
worlds  for  the  wildest  dreams  of  human  progress. 

Another  class  of  anthropologists,  however,  have  looked  for 
the  ultimate  extinction  of  the  species.  According  to  the  an- 
cient traditions,  the  golden,  silver  and  brazen  ages  of  mankind, 
being  indicative  of  a  career  of  moral  degeneracy,  terminate  in 
a  deluge  or  conflagration,  as  a  divine  judgment,  by  which  the 
corrupt  race  is  destroyed;  and  times  of  great  social  depravity 
have  naturally  been  regarded  as  ominous  of  decline  and  speedy 
extermination.  The  Roman  satirists  thus  predicted  the  deca- 
dence of  the  empire.  The  dissolute  followers  of  Louis  XIII. 
are  said  themselves  to  have  exclaimed,  on  the  verge  of  the 
French  revolution,  'After  us,  the  Deluge!"  And  sceptical 
philosophers,  such  as  Montesquieu,  Voltaire  and  Volney,  have 
speculated  in  a  like  spirit  upon  the  general  decay  of  nations 
and  fall  of  empires  as  the  inevitable  fate  of  mankind.  But 
some  more  scientific  observers,  apart  from  all  sacred  or  pro- 
fane prediction,  have  fancied  physical  rather  than  moral  causes 
of  extinction,  in  a  declining  vitality  of  the  earth,  with  all  the 
floras,  faunas  and  races  which  it  sustains.  Eminent  astrono- 
mers, as  we  have  seen,  have  declared  that  a  time  must  come, 
when  our  planet,  from  the  dissipation  of  its  own  internal  heat 
or  the  cooling  down  of  the  solar  fires,  will  have  become 
shrouded  in  universal  winter  and  rendered,  like  the  moon,  un- 
inhabitable by  man  or  any  living  thing.  Geologists,  also,  have 
predicted  great  catastrophic  revolutions  of  the  terrestrial  sur- 
face by  flood  or  fire,  destroying  all  existing  animal  or  human 
life.  Botanists  and  zoologists,  such  as  Brocchi  and  Naudin, 
independently  of  any  astronomical  or  geological  causes  of  ex- 
termination, have  maintained  that  the  primitive  vigor  or  pro- 
lific virtue  of  every  species  of  plant  and  animal,  like  an  ex- 
pended force,  is  on  the  decline  and  must,  sooner  or  later,  die 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Anthropology.  165 

out  in  weakness  and  sterility ;  whilst  others,  with  Fleming, 
Wallace  and  De  Candolle  appear  to  have  argued  that  cultivated 
plants,  domesticated  animals  and  civilized  men,  besides  dis- 
placing and  extirpating  as  many  wild  species,  only  impoverish 
more  than  they  enrich  the  lands  upon  which  they  depend  for 
sustenance,  and  so  must  ultimately  exhaust  the  general 
treasury  of  nature. 

And  on  the  basis  of  such  inductions  the  anthropological 
sciences  seem  to  be  already  adjusted  for  a  general  prog- 
nosis of  human  extinction.  Ethnology  has  brought  a  pre- 
sage of  declining  races.  Oliva,  Humboldt,  the  Kanes  have 
told  us  of  long  extinct  peoples  in  Peru,  of  decaying  popula- 
tions in  Mexico,  and  of  starving  Eskimos  at  the  Arctic  pole. 
Schoolcraft,  Hochstetter  and  Popping,  among  many  others, 
have  argued  that  the  aboriginal  savages  of  the  North  and  South 
American  States  are  steadily  disappearing  before  the  march 
of  civilization,  whilst  the  Spanish,  French  and  English  races 
which  have  supplanted  them,  according  to  Knox,  Baudin  and 
Kennedy,  are  themselves  but  doomed  to  perish,  after  a  few 
generations,  in  the  disastrous  process  of  acclimatization.  Go- 
bineau,  Pouchet  and  Nott  have  maintained  that  the  amalgama- 
tion of  races,  so  far  from  improving  them,  tends  to  their  phy- 
sical deterioration  and  speedy  exhaustion,  through  infertility, 
as  may  be  seen  in  the  Spanish  Creole,  the  American  mulatto 
and  the  Indian  half-breed  of  Mexico  and  Canada.  The  French 
ethnologist,  Virey,  at  the  close  of  his  volumes  on  the  Natural 
History  of  the  Human  Race,  has  denied  that  there  can  be  any 
"  megalanthropogenesis,"  (or  breeding  of  great  men,)  referring 
for  proof  to  the  obscure  descendants  of  Socrates,  Cicero  and 
Charlemagne,  and  to  the  proverbial  degeneracy  of  royal  and 
noble  houses,  amid  all  the  appliances  of  European  civilization. 
Dr.  Maudsley,  treating  of  brain  diseases,  maintains  that  brilliant 
wit  and  genius,  as  in  poor  Charles  Lamb,  are  not  seldom 
symptomatic  of  an  insane  temperament  which,  if  propagated^ 
can  only  issue,  after  a  few  generations,  in  madness,  idiocy  and 
extinction.  Dr.  S.  Weir  Mitchell,  in  his  timely  paper  entitled 
"  Wear  and  Tear,"  has  sketched  a  suggestive  picture  of  the 
cerebral  exhaustion  and  decline  of  ancestral  vigor,  attendant 
upon  our  higher  culture.     And  thoughtful  far-seeing  observers 


1 66  Tlic  Schism  in  AntJiropology.  [part  i. 

in  all  civilized  nations  are  foretelling  an  Iliad  of  woes  as  the 
inevitable  result  of  the  luxurious  vices  which  are  slowly  sap- 
ping the   brain    and  virtue    of  the    noblest   breeds  of  men. 

Philology  also  has  uttered  a  prediction  of  steadily  declining 
languages.  Jesuit  and  Protestant  missionaries  in  America, 
Africa  and"  Asia,  for  several  centuries,  have  been  reporting 
innumerable  savage  dialects  already  perished  or  perishing 
with  the  tribes  which  use  them,  not  only  without  a  literature, 
but  without  even  such  a  memorial  as  the  Eliot  Bible  of  Mas- 
sachusetts. Latham,  Lepsius  and  Bunsen,  by  their  hypothe- 
sis of  a  primitive  Aryan  language  in  Asia,  seem  to  agree 
with  the  early  linguists,  in  treating  all  the  barbarous  tongues 
of  the  scattered  family  of  mankind,  as  only  decaying  frag- 
ments of  the  pristine  speech  of  Eden,  or  dying  echoes  of  the 
great  jargon  at  Babel.  Schlegel,  Bopp  and  Grimm  have  traced 
the  genealogy  of  the  dead  languages,  which  have  flourished 
in  succession  from  the  banks  of  the  Ganges  to  the  shores  of 
Spain,  the  Sanscrit,  the  Hebrew,  the  Greek,  the  Latin  and  the 
Celtic,  now  lingering  like  ghosts  amid  the  effete  nations  which 
once  spoke  them,  whilst  even  the  modern  literary  languages 
which  have  supplanted  these  ancient  classics,  such  as  the 
Italian,  the  Spanish,  the  French,  the  German  and  the  English, 
according  to  Max  Miiller,  are  themselves  likewise  doomed  to 
inevitable  decay,  except  as  reinforced  by  the  new  blood  of 
vulgar  speech.  And  purists  in  all  languages  are  sighing  over 
the  decline  of  classic  models  and  the  reign  of  slang  as  but 
signs  of  returning  rudeness  and  general  corruption. 

Archaeology,  too,  has  furnished  a  precedent  of  declining 
arts  as  well  as  races.  The  conservative  school  of  antiquari- 
ans, with  more  or  less  distinctness,  seems  inclined  to  regard  all 
barbarism  and  savagism  as  mere  decaying  and  putrid  frag- 
ments of  a  primitive  civilization,  from  which  different  peoples 
and  tongues  have  lapsed  through  physical  degeneracy  or  ad- 
verse climate  and  situation,  and  to  represent  all  existing  civili- 
zation as  destined  to  a  like  decay  from  like  causes.  The  Duke 
of  Argyll,  as  wc  have  seen,  thus  explains  the  decline  and  loss 
of  primeval  art  among  barbarous  and  savage  nations.  Mr. 
Wendell  Phillips,  in  one  of  his  popular  lectures,  has  exalted 
the  lost  arts  of  antiquity  over  any  modern  handicraft.     Dr. 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Anthropology.  167 

Joseph  R.  Thomson,  when  discoursing  upon  the  wonders  of 
Egyptian  civihzation,  thought  them  fitted  to  destroy  the  con- 
ceit of  the  proudest  capitals  of  modern  times.  And  even  at 
the  height  of  our  boasted  material  progress,  some  English 
economists,  of  the  school  of  Malthus  and  Ricardo,  have  been 
foreboding  an  industrial  decline,  consequent  upon  a  gradual 
increase  of  population  beyond  the  sustaining  powers  of  the 
soil,  and  the  natural  supplies  of  coal,  iron  and  other  means  of 
physical  life  and  progress.  In  a  word,  if  we  listen  to  such 
gloomy  vaticinations,  we  must  believe  that  all  human  races, 
languages  and  arts  are  but  doomed  to  extinction,  and  man 
himself,  as  he  exhausts  the  earth,  only  destined  to  bury  him- 
self in  its  ruins.  t 

At  length  we  are  reaching  that  third  and  ultimate  stage  of 
open  rupture,  in  which  the  whole  biblical  anthropology 
is  to  be  repudiated  as  of  no  scientific  import  or  even  philo- 
sophical value.  The  earlier  naturalists  who  professed  theism, 
such  as  Lamarck  and  the  author  of  the  "  Vestiges,"  were  not 
inclined  to  question  the  scripture  doctrine  of  the  First  Adam, 
and  others,  who  were  of  a  more  sceptical  turn,  such  as  De 
Maillet  and  Monboddo,  simply  observed  a  tone  of  irony  and 
raillery  which  could  not  be  charged  with  irreligion.  But 
later,  more  advanced  disciples  of  the  school  are  now  beginning 
seriously  to  treat  the  origin  of  man  as  a  mere  zoological  ques- 
tion, and  to  accept  openly  the  most  unscriptural  conse- 
quences of  their  speculations.  Lyell,  indeed,  has  discussed  the 
antiquity  of  man  through  an  elaborate  treatise,  as  if  he  had 
never  heard  of  the  book  of  Genesis,  unless  he  refers  to  it  by 
his  suggestion,  that  at  some  remote  period  the  whole  space 
between  the  highest  animal  and  the  lowest  human  races  may 
have  been  cleared  at  a  bound  by  one  start  of  formative  nature, 
and  the  salient  epoch  appear  no  more  miraculous,  after  all  the 
mists  of  mythologic  fiction  shall  have  been  dissipated  by 
historical  criticism,  than  the  birth  of  an  extraordinary  genius 
from  rude  parents.  Mr.  Darwin,  manifesting  a  similar  reserve 
as  to  the  Scriptures,  maintains  that  there  is  no  evidence 
that  man  was  aboriginally  endowed  with  belief  in  a  God,  and 
declares  with  intrepid  candor  and  consistency  that  he  would 
rather   be    descended   from   the   heroic   little   monkey,  who 


i68  The  Schism  in  Antliropology.  [part  i. 

braved  death  in  defence  of  his  keeper,  or  the  brave  old  baboon 
who  rescued  his  comrade  from  a  crowd  of  dogs,  than  from  a 
savage  who  practices  cannibahsm  and  sorcery.  In  the  same 
spirit  Professor  Rogers,  as  President  of  the  American  Scientific 
Association,  has  lately  maintained  that  the  cruelties  practised  by 
the  lower  races,  and  the  outrages  attributed  to  total  depravity 
among  civilized  men,  are  but  the  outbursts  of  a  savage  nature, 
inherited  from  their  animal  progenitors.  Dr.  Charles  Hodge 
complains  of  the  chief  archseologists  of  the  day,  that  they 
seem  to  have  discarded  the  Biblical  history,  only  themselves 
to  build  up  enormous  chronologies  upon  evidence  which 
would  not  determine  an  intelligent  jury  in  a  suit  for  thirty 
shillings,  and  though  unable  to  trace  any  design  in  the  eye  or 
the  hand,  can  find  enough  in  a  flint-chip  or  bone  implement 
to  indicate  a  whole  pre-historic  epoch.  Dr.  Asa  Gray  admits, 
while  he  deplores,  the  tendency  of  the  average  scientific  mind, 
as  soon  as  it  finds  out  how  anything  is  done  in  nature,  to  con- 
clude that  God  did  not  do  it,  and  can  only  look  forward  to 
some  better  time  when  the  religious  faith  which  survived  the 
notion  of  the  fixity  of  the  earth,  may  equally  outlast  the  no- 
tion of  the  fixity  of  the  species  which  inhabit  it.  And  Pro- 
fessor J.  P.  Lesley,  as  if  speaking  for  his  whole  order,  in  his 
treatise  on  "Man's  Position  and  Destiny  viewed  from  the 
Platform  of  the  Sciences,"  declares  of  the  statements  in  Gen- 
esis, that  men  of  science  now  treat  them  as  old  Jewish 
legends,  and,  indeed,  have  become  so  indifferent  to  them, 
that  it  is  not  worth  while  to  try  to  show  their  absurdity. 
On  the  revealed  side  of  the  same  science,  there  have  been 
corresponding  departures  from  the  rational  theory  of  man- 
kind. In  the  first  stage  came  the  rejection  of  portions,  at  least, 
of  that  false  scientific  anthropology  which  had  very  early 
crept  into  the  Church.  Though  the  study  of  races,  languages 
and  arts  was  largely  prejudged  by  an  authoritative  exegesis, 
there  appeared  divines,  now  and  then,  sagacious  or  fortunate 
enough  to  foresee  and  welcome  more  scientific  researches. 
The  Irish  St.  Virgilius  in  the  ninth  century,  dared  to  advocate 
the  theory  of  antipodal  races,  when  all  Christendom  believed 
it  a  mere  heathen  myth,  inconsistent  alike  with  the  locality 
of  hell  and  our  descent  from  Adam.     Thomas  Aquinas,  with 


CHAP.  III.]  Biblical  Antl tropology.  169 

other  schoolmen,  seems  to  have  taught  in  his  "  Summa,"  that 
mankind  was  created  potentially  or  derivatively  under  physical 
law,  and  not,  as  most  modern  theologians  hold,  by  an  instan- 
taneous fiat  or  miracle.  Calvin,  in  his  "  Genesis,"  whilst  ex- 
alting the  divine  image  in  unfallen  man,  did  not  scruple  to 
draw  a  lesson  of  humility  from  his  previous  origin  in  the 
ground,  and  even  insisted  upon  his  gradual  formation  as  his 
peculiar  distinction  among  animals.  Turrettin,  though  he 
fixed  the  date  of  the  human  epoch  to  the  day  in  the  civil 
calendar,  was  nevertheless  wise  enough  to  premise  that  the 
whole  question  is  chronological  rather  than  theological.  Isaac 
Peyrere,  first  a  Protestant  infidel,  then  a  Catholic  priest  of  the 
Oratory,  endeavored  to  explain  the  origin  of  the  newly  dis- 
covered North  American  races  in  a  "  Theological  System  ac- 
cording to  the  Pre-adamite  Hypothesis,"  which,  had  he  not 
recanted  it,  might  have  distinguished  him  as  the  forerunner, 
if  not  the  founder,  of  the  school  of  Forbes  and  Agassiz. 
Bishop  Butler,  in  his  "  Analogy,"  with  rare  forethought,  ap- 
pears to  have  started  several  questions  of  recent  anthropology, 
such  as  the  material  origin  of  man,  his  development  from  an 
animal  state,  and  his  gradual  predominance  as  the  governing 
animal  in  our  globe.  Bishop  Berkely,  also,  in  his  Alciphron, 
though  maintaining  the  received  Mosaic  chronology,  treated 
of  the  invention  of  arts  and  sciences,  and  the  peopling  of  the 
world  in  the  light  of  Egyptian  and  Chinese  traditions,  with  the 
learning  and  spirit  of  a  modern  antiquarian.  President  Stan- 
hope Smith,  of  Princeton  College,  at  the  close  of  the  last 
century,  published  a  work,  still  quoted  among  ethnological 
authorities,  on  the  "  Causes  of  the  Variety  of  Complexion  and 
Figure  of  the  Human  Species,"  advocating  the  theory  of 
climatic  influences,  in  opposition  to  Lord  Kames,  and  in 
agreement  with  Cuvier  and  Blumenbach.  The  Spanish  Jesuit 
Hervas,  at  the  beginning  of  the  present  century,  digested  the 
linguistic  reports  of  his  missionary  associates  from  all  parts 
of  the  world,  in  a  voluminous  "  Catalogue  of  Languages,"  con- 
taining six  hundred  dialects,  discarding  Hebrew  as  the  primi- 
tive speech,  and  anticipating  discoveries  since  associated  with 
the  names  of  Humboldt  and  Bopp.  And  during  the  present 
century,  as  an  incidental  fruit  of  Protestant  missions,  a  host 


I/O  Tlie  Schism  in  Anthropology.  [part  i. 

of  investigators  throughout  the  heathen  field,  such  as  Hecke- 
welder  in  America,  Moffat  in  Africa,  Morrison  in  Asia,  have 
been  contributing  ethnological,  philological,  and  archaeological 
data  for  re-casting  the  whole  Scripture  doctrine  of  the  First 
and  Second  Adam,  as  including  in  one  blood,  and  speech, 
and  creed,  every  kindred,  and  tongue,  and  people  under  the 
heaven. 

During  all  this  time,  however,  the  great  majority  of  divines, 
unconscious  of  the  newly  forming  scientific  anthropology, 
remained  attached  to  the  ancient  dogmas  respecting  the  origi- 
nal perfection  of  man,  his  probation  and  fall  in  Adam,  and  the 
predicted  new  race  in  Christ.  As  to  the  first  of  these  doc- 
trines, Pagan,  Hebrew,  and  Christian  traditions  seemed  to 
have  converged  backward  to  a  common  primitive  state  of 
purity  and  happiness.  According  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Zend- 
Avesta,  Ormuzd,  the  good  genius,  reigned  alone  during  the 
first  age  of  the  world,  in  a  land  of  delight  and  plenty,  until 
the  first  man  ate  of  the  Hom,  a  tree  guarded  by  myriad  an- 
gels, when  Ahriman,  the  evil  genius,  entered  the  happy 
realm,  and  brought  death  to  men.  The  Chinese  had  their 
tradition  of  a  garden  in  the  midst  of  the  mountains,  on  which 
perpetually  flowed  the  fountain  of  immortality,  dividing  in  four 
streams,  as  the  source  of  all  life.  The  paradise  of  the  Egyp- 
tians was  upon  a  steep  mountain  on  an  island,  where  Osiris 
was  born  and  lived  with  his  sister  and  wife  Isis,  with  abun- 
dance of  corn  and  wine,  amid  perennial  fruits  and  flowers. 
Hesiod,  Apollodorus,  Ovid,  Juvenal,  and  other  Greek  and 
Latin  poets,  had  embellished  various  myths,  which  were  re- 
garded as  only  distorted  reminiscences  of  lost  paradise,  such 
as  the  image  for  the  first  man  formed  by  Prometheus  out  of 
moist  earth,  whilst  the  winds  breathed  life  into  it  at  the  com- 
mand of  Jupiter;  the  gifts  of  Pandora  endowed,  like  another 
Eve,  with  every  divine  blessing,  but  also  with  the  fatal  casket 
of  all  human  woes ;  the  nectar  or  ambrosial  food  of  the  gods 
of  which  no  mortal  dare  taste;  the  garden  of  the  Hesperidcs, 
with  its  miraculous  trees  and  golden  fruit,  enclosed  with  walls 
and  guarded  by  a  dragon  ;  the  old  Saturnian  age  of  innocence 
when  men  and  animals  conversed  together  in  a  state  of  na- 
ture ;  and  the  pure  and  blissful  Atlantidcs  or  Hyperboreans, 


CHAP.  III.]  Biblical  Anthropology.  l/r 

who  in  a  clime  of  perpetual  sunshine  knew  no  discord,  sick- 
ness and  death.  The  rabbins  had  indulged  in  endless  specu- 
lations respecting  the  divine  image  in  which  man  was  created. 
In  the  apocryphal  Book  of  Wisdom  he  was  described  as  en- 
dowed with  an  immortal  body,  with  dominion  over  the  earth, 
and  with  moral  uprightness  of  soul.  Sirach  included  in  this 
divine  likeness,  together  with  authority  over  the  animals,  the 
gifts  of  reason,  speech,  and  other  excellencies.  Philo,  con- 
sistently with  the  Platonic  view,  placed  the  image  of  God  in 
the  rational  soul,  considered  as  a  reflection  or  embodiment  of 
the  divine  reason  or  logos.  And  the  cabbalists  generally  at- 
tributed to  Adam,  not  only  extraordinary  physical  strength 
and  beauty,  but  a  fabulous  amount  of  scientific  knowledge, 
expressed  in  the  names  he  applied  to  natural  objects,  and 
handed  down  in  the  very  etymology  of  the  Hebrew,  which 
they  regarded  as  the  divine  language  of  Eden.  The  Church 
fathers  had  also  delighted  to  magnify  the  physical  and  mental 
perfection  of  Adam.  TertuUian,  Melito,  and  Audoeus,  com- 
bining materialistic  views  of  the  soul  with  anthropomorphic 
views  of  the  Deity,  sought  for  the  divine  image  in  the  mere 
bodily  structure  and  appearance,  especially  the  human  face 
divine,  which  before  the  fall  was  supposed  to  be  unspeakably 
majestic  and  luminous.  Chrysostom,  Athanasius,  and  Gregory 
of  Nyssa,  dwelt  upon  the  more  refined  conceit  which  placed 
it  in  the  godlike  dominion  of  man  over  nature,  as  well  as  in 
the  rational  control  which  he  exercises  over  his  own  animal 
passions.  Irenaeus,  Clement,  and  Origen,  finding  the  chief 
seat  of  the  divine  image  in  the  soul  of  man,  were  naturally  led 
to  regard  his  noble  countenance  and  regal  dominion  as  but 
external  expressions  of  that  inward  likeness.  Augustine,  as 
if  combining  these  views,  endeavored  to  discern  in  the  three- 
fold constitution  of  body,  soul,  and  spirit,  that  which  could 
be  regarded  as  a  miniature  reflection  of  the  Trinity.  And 
nearly  all  the  fathers  distinguished,  according  to  Genesis,  be- 
tween the  image  and  the  likeness  of  God ;  the  former  being 
original  and  potential,  and  the  latter  acquired  and  developed. 
The  schoolmen  proceeded  to  refine  these  distinctions  with 
still  more  subtlety.  John  Scotus,  Hugh  of  St.  Victor,  and 
Alexander  Hales  placed  the  image  of  God    in  that    natural 


1/2  Tlic  Schism  in  Anthropology.  [part  i. 

or  essential  humanity,  possessed  both  before  and  since  the 
fall,  whilst  the  likeness  of  God  was  included  in  those  super- 
natural additional  gifts  of  righteousness,  immortality,  and 
honor  which  have  been  forfeited  and  lost.  Peter  Lombard,  in 
his  Sentences,  referred  the  former  to  the  mental  faculties  or 
knowledge  of  truth,  and  the  latter,  to  the  moral  affections  or 
love  of  virtue.  Bernard  pushed  the  distinction  so  far  as  to 
declare  that  the  image  of  God  even  in  Gehenna  might  ever 
burn,  but  could  not  be  consumed,  as  it  pertains  to  the  very 
essence  of  the  soul,  which,  though  without  the  moral  likeness 
of  Divinity,  would  still  reflect  His  intellectual  nature.  Aquinas 
admitted  the  distinction,  but  held  that  it  was  more  verbal  and 
logical  than  actual,  as  man  before  the  fall  had  never  been  in 
the  mere  natural  state,  without  grace  as  well  as  without  sin. 
Berthold,  and  other  mystics,  fancied  a  sort  of  a  divine  super- 
scription or  signature  on  the  very  face  of  man,  the  eyes  and 
connected  brows,  ear,  nostrils  and  mouth,  together  outlining 
with  flourished  letters  the  phrase  "  homo  Dei."  And  all  the 
schoolmen  engaged  in  the  most  absurd  discussions  concern- 
ing the  physiology,  language  and  knowledge  of  Adam  and 
Eve,  and  what  these  would  have  become  had  they  not  fallen 
from  paradise.  Roman  Catholic  doctors  at  the  Reformation 
simply  accepted  and  emphasized  the  patristic  and  scholastic 
anthropology.  The  Council  of  Trent  made  it  a  damnable 
heresy  to  deny  that  Adam  through  his  disobedience  lost  that 
righteousness  and  holiness  in  which  he  had  been  constituted. 
Bellarmin  claimed  the  whole  testimony  of  the  fathers,  in- 
cluding Augustine,  for  retaining  the  divine  image  in  fallen 
man,  and  referring  the  divine  likeness  to  that  original  right- 
eousness, which  was  like  a  festive  garment  of  which  he  has 
been  denuded,  a  splendid  dowry  of  paradise  which  he  has 
forfeited,  a  virginal  wreath  of  which  he  has  been  despoiled. 
And  Suarez  cited  to  the  same  purport  the  authority  of  Aquinas 
and  the  schoolmen.  Protestant  divines  endeavored  to  re- 
define the  image  of  God  with  some  new  distinctions.  Lu- 
ther maintained  that  the  whole  moral  as  well  as  intellectual 
likeness  was  concreated  in  Adam,  and  has  been  lost  by  the 
fall;  the  rational  soul  itself,  as  it  now  exists  in  man,  being  but 
a    corrupt   inheritance.     Hollazius    included   in    the  original 


CHAP.  III.]  Biblical  Anthropology.  173 

divine  image  the  attributes  of  knowledge,  righteousness,  holi- 
ness, immortality,  and  majesty,  and  defined  it  as  an  accidental 
likeness  in  distinction  fi-om  that  essential  likeness  pertaining 
to  the  Eternal  Son  alone,  as  the  express  image  of  the  Father's 
person.  Calvin  carefully  animadverted  upon  the  gross  physi- 
cal image  of  Tertullian,  the  refined  intellectual  image  of  Chry- 
sostom,  and  the  subtle  trinitarian  image  of  Augustine,  main- 
taining that  these  are  but  expressions  or  scintillations  of  that 
true  moral  image  which  had  its  chief  seat  in  the  heart,  and 
thence  irradiated  the  intellect  and  transfigured  the  body. 
And  later  Puritan  divines,  such  as  Owen  in  his  "  Discourse 
on  the  Holy  Spirit,"  and  Edwards  in  his  "  Religious  Affections," 
whilst  admitting  a  certain  extant  physical  and  intellectual 
hkeness  of  Deity,  blurred  and  marred  by  the  fall,  insist  that 
the  whole  moral  image  has  been  utterly  obliterated,  and  can 
only  be  supernaturally  restored  by  a  new  creature  in  Christ 
Jesus.  It  was  not  possible  as  yet  to  institute  any  scientific 
correspondences,  such  as  are  now  broached,  between  the  savage 
and  the  paradisaic  state,  or  between  the  pre-historic  ages  of 
the  archaeologists  and  the  antediluvian  arts  described  in 
Genesis. 

As  to  the  fall  of  mankind  in  Adam,  there  had  also  been  a 
general  concurrence  of  theological  opinions  before  and  since 
the  Christian  era.  All  Gentile  traditions,  the  Persian,  the  In- 
dian, the  Chinese,  the  Egyptian,  the  Greek  and  Roman,  seemed 
to  point  back  to  a  primitive  apostacy,  like  so  many  broken 
links  of  a  chain,  remotely  connecting  with  some  one  head  of 
the  whole  human  family.  The  rabbins  had  thus  explained 
the  universality  of  death  and  sin.  In  the  Chaldaic  paraphrase 
of  Ruth,  it  was  taught  that  because  Eve  ate  of  the  forbidden 
fruit,  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  earth  are  subject  to  death.  The 
Son  of  Sirach  declared  that  of  the  woman  came  the  beginning 
of  sin,  and  through  her  we  all  die.  And  the  Talmudists  gen- 
erally vindicated  the  suffering  of  saints  and  infants,  with  other 
descendants  of  Adam,  as  but  an  illustration  of  the  Scriptural 
principle  that  the  iniquity  of  parents  is  visited  upon  children 
from  generation  to  generation.  The  Greek  fathers  dwelt  upon 
the  physical  effects  of  the  fall,  whilst  the  Latin  fathers  traced 
its   moral   consequences.     Justin,    Clement   and    Chrysostom 


1/4  The  Schism  in  Anthropology.  [part  i. 

variously  characterized  the  sin  of  the  first  pair  as  pruriency, 
voluptuousness  and  vanity,  into  which  they  were  seduced  by 
Satan,  and  in  consequence  of  which  their  descendants  became 
mortal,  diseased  and  accessible  to  temptation.  Tertullian, 
Ambrose  and  Augustine  taught  more  explicitly  that  the  hu- 
man race  was' contained  in  the  loins  of  the  first  man,  that  all 
men  have  sinned  in  Adam,  their  representative,  as  well  as 
progenitor,  and  have,  therefore,  not  only  inherited  his  corrupt 
nature,  but  actually  incurred  the  guilt  of  his  transgression,  to- 
gether with  its  consequent  miseries,  both  in  body  and  soul. 
And  this  general  difference  between  the  Eastern  and  Western 
Churches  became  more  pronounced  and  extreme  within  the 
latter  Church  by  the  controversy  with  Pelagius,  who  held  that 
Adam's  sin  injured  no  one  but  himself,  except  through  its  ex- 
ample, and  that  all  men  are  born  innocent  and  morally  healthy. 
The  schoolmen  ranged  themselves  between  Augustinism  and 
Pelagianism.  Anselm  and  Aquinas  held  that  the  sin  of  Adam, 
with  the  loss  of  his  original  righteousness,  was  imputed  even 
to  unbaptized  infants  and  pagans  as  a  moral  guilt,  rather  than 
as  a  mere  physical  inheritance;  while  Abelard  and  Duns 
Scotus  taught  that  such  classes  were  only  involved  in  the 
punishment  of  that  first  transgression,  since  all  sin  consists  in 
voluntary  acts.  And  the  mystics  and  early  reformers,  such 
as  Wessel  and  Savonarola,  though  referring  the  consequences 
rather  than  the  guilt  of  Adam's  sin  to  his  descendants,  viewed 
their  actual  transgression  as  but  an  imitation  and  repetition  of 
the  original  fall.  At  the  Reformation,  while  the  Catholics  as 
a  body  reverted  toward  Pelagianism,  the  Protestants  advanced 
to  an  extreme  Augustinianism.  Jansen,  Arnauld  and  Pascal, 
who  in  this  respect  were  but  Protestants  within  the  Roman 
Church,  restored  and  defended  the  doctrine  of  Augustine,  in 
its*most  Uncompromising  form,  against  that  of  Pelagius.  Lu- 
ther and  Melancthon,  in  their  formularies,  taught  that  the 
corruption  of  human  nature,  propagated  from  Adam,  was"  so 
complete  and  profound,  as  to  involve  the  entire  loss  of  the 
divine  image  and  extend  to  all  the  higher  faculties  of  the  soul, 
heart,  mind  and  will.  Calvin  and  Beza,  in  their  Confessions, 
more  explicitly  held  that  Adam's  sin  was  directly  imputed  to 
his  posterity,  so  that  his  fault  was  also  our  own,  and  by  a  just 


CHAP.  III.]  Biblical  Anthropology.  175 

judgment  of  God  we  were  condemned  to  be  born  utteriy 
corrupt  and  depraved.  The  Westminster  standards,  taking 
Adam  to  be  the  federal  or  representative  as  well  as  natural 
head  of  the  human  race,  declared  that  the  covenant  being 
made  with  him,  not  only  for  himself,  but  for  his  posterity,  all 
mankind,  descending  from  him  by  ordinary  generation,  sinned 
in  him  and  fell  with  him  in  his  first  transgression.  And  this 
became  substantially  the  doctrine  of  the  chief  evangelical 
Churches  of  the  last  century.  It  was  too  soon  as  yet  to  at- 
tempt any  scientific  verification  of  these  dogmas,  such  as  is 
beginning  to  be  made,  by  associating  co-Adamite  and  pre- 
Adamite  theories  of  the  savage  and  animal  origin  of  man 
with  a  special  divine  dispensation  to  Adam  as  the  natural  pro- 
genitor of  the  Caucasian  race  and  federal  representative  of  the 
whole  human  family. 

As  to  the  new  race  in  Christ,  the  second  Adam  and  Lord 
from  heaven,  it  had  been  the  general  faith  for  centuries  that 
our  Saviour  became  the  type  as  well  as  founder  of  a  restored 
and  perfected  humanity,  predestinated  to  be  conformed  to  His 
image.  While  all  the  sacred  traditions  of  the  Gentile  nations 
streamed  backward  in  melancholy  retrospect  of  lost  paradise, 
the  Messianic  prophecies  among  the  Jewish  people,  in  marked 
contrast,  reached  forward  in  joyful  expectation  of  a  new  econ- 
omy, which  would  restore  and  far  excel  the  glory  of  the  old. 
And  though  among  the  early  Christians,  the  two  rival  Juda- 
izing  and  Hellenizing  factions,  the  Ebionites  and  the  Docetae, 
in  defining  the  doctrine  of  the  God-man,  soon  began  to  exag- 
gerate Mis  humanity  at  the  expense  of  His  divinity,  or  His  di- 
vinity at  the  expense  of  His  humanity,  yet  during  the  subse- 
quent ages  of  the  Church,  at  length  there  grew  up  the  or- 
thodox dogma  of  the  two  natures,  divine  and  human,  in  one 
and  the  same  person.  The  fathers,  the  schoolmen  and  some 
of  the  reformers  have  since  indulged  in  numerous  subtle  specu- 
lations upon  the  mysterious  union  of  these  two  natures  in 
Christ,  but  all  have  been  agreed  that  by  taking  unto  Himself 
a  true  body  and  a  reasonable  soul  He  became  man,  and,  like 
another  Adam,  was  the  federal  head  or  representative  of  a 
new  regenerate  humanity,  first  exemplified  in  His  own  per- 
son and  yet  to  be  extended  to  the  whole  race  of  mankind. 


1/6  The  Schism  in  Anthropology.  [part  i. 

The  attempts  to  find  a  scientific  basis  for  such  dogmas  belong 
to  the  speculative  Christology  of  a  later  day. 

At  length,  in  the  last  schismatic  stage,  we  now  find  an  ex- 
clusively biblical  or  dogmatic  anthropology  which  would  de- 
liberately shut  its  eyes  to  all  the  discoveries  of  ethnologists, 
linguists  and  antiquarians,  as  having  no  bearing  whatever  upon 
either  the  veracity  of  Scripture  or  the  true,  complete  doctrine 
of  mankind.  A  former  school  of  divines,  like  Stanhope  Smith 
and  Bachman,  could  contribute  scientific  memoirs  and  trea- 
tises upon  the  human  species  without  fear  of  imperiling  any 
sacred  interest ; '  and  devout  laymen  of  the  same  school  did 
not  scruple  to  include  among  their  authorities  the  Hebrew 
Scriptures  as  at  least  of  equal  weight  with  the  Hindoo  Shas- 
ter  and  the  Chinese  Shoo-king,  nor  hesitate  to  rank  the  un- 
broken traditions  of  the  great  religious  races  of  Asia  and  Eu- 
rope far  above  the  scattered  legends  of  savage  tribes  in  America 
and  Polynesia.  But  another  and  very  different  class,  in  our 
day,  seem  bent  upon  resisting  all  the  light  which  the  new  an- 
thropological researches  can  shed  upon  the  meaning  of  Gene- 
sis, and  are  still  urging  the  old,  crude  interpretation  in  the 
face  of  the  most  earnest  protests.  Principal  Dawson,  in  his 
"Story  of  Earth  and  Man,"  gives  his  opinion  that  the  evolu- 
tionism which  professes  to  have  a  Creator  somewhere  behind 
it  is  practically  atheistic  and,  if  possible,  more  unphilosophical 
than  that  which  professes  to  set  out  from  self-existing  star- 
dust,  containing  all  the  possibilities  of  the  universe.  Dr.  Gray 
warns  such  apologists  that,  for  the  defence  of  a  mere  untena- 
ble outpost,  they  are  firing  away  in  their  catapults  the  very 
bastions  of  the  citadel,  and  deprecates  their  unwise  attempt  to 
force  devout  naturalists  into  the  ranks  of  Buchner  and  Vogt. 
Dr.  Hodge,  in  a  recent  able  treatise,  defines  Darwinism  as 
Atheism,  makes  it  incompatible  with  the  orthodoxy  of  Mivart, 
Henslow,  McCosh  and  Brown,  and  also  depreciates  the  classi- 
cal illustration  by  which  Paley  sought  to  prove  a  creative  de- 
sign in  the  animal  species.  The  Rev.  Walter  Mitchell,  from 
the  chair  of  the  Victoria  Institute,  as  if  speaking  for  the  Chris- 
tian scientists  of  England,  declares  that  Darwinism  is  an  at- 
tempt to  push  the  Creator  farther  back  out  of  view  and  de- 
throne God,  and  that  the  creation  and  maintenance  of  species 


CHAP.  III.]        The  Schism  in  the  Psychical  Sciences.  177 

within  impassible  barriers  is  the  true  teaching  of  Genesis  and 
the  only  scientific  theory.  Such  hasty  prejudgment  has  been 
especially  shown  in  reference  to  the  question  of  the  origin  of 
the  human  species.  Dr.  Keil,  in  his  Genesis,  would  deny  that 
such  a  question  falls  within  the  province  of  inductive  science, 
and  has  described  the  organization  of  Adam  out  of  the  ground 
and  his  animation  with  a  soul,  as  an  instantaneous  miracle, 
wrought  by  an  omnipotent  fiat,  without  connection  with  any 
previous  process  or  product  of  creation.  Dr.  Kurtz,  though 
he  admits  that  all  the  powers  of  nature  conspired  with  the 
Spirit  of  God  in  the  formation  of  man,  denies  that  there  could 
have  been  any  time  or  succession  in  the  process,  as  it  would 
be  derogatory  to  imagine  him  in  the  animal  stage  even  for  a 
moment.  And  other  learned  divines  and  commentators,  living 
at  a  time  when  anthropologists  on  all  sides  are  unearthing  the 
fossil  flora  and  fauna  coeval  with  primitive  man,  seem  to  find 
nothing  more  in  the  sixth  day  of  Genesis  than  a  confused  suc- 
cession of  monster  creations,  enormous  fishes,  reptiles  and 
mammals,  following  each  other  in  a  few  hours,  and  serving 
only  as  a  prelude  to  the  doctrine  of  Adam's  fall. 

And  thus  anthropology,  the  science  which  includes  the  ori- 
gin and  destiny  of  our  species,  if  dismembered  by  the  indiffer- 
ent spirit,  would  but  retrace  the  frescoes  of  Raphael  and  the 
paradise  of  Milton,  or  revive  the  sphinxes  of  Hesiod  and  the 
centaurs  of  Virgil.  a 

Passing  next  into  the  psychical  sciences,  we  shall  there,  in 
like  manner,  discover  the  sciolists  and  dogmatists  gradually 
entrenching  themselves  during  the  last  three  centuries  in  op- 
posite systems  of  thought  and  faith,  which  have  stood,  amid 
the  clouds  of  speculation,  like  lofty  feudal  castles,  frowning 
defiance  across  a  contested  border. 

If  the  gulf,  which  has  been  yawning  between  the  biblical 
and  scientific  sections  of  these  sciences,  has  not  yet  become  as 
obvious  and  familiar  as  that  which  we  have  traced  in  the  other 
sciences,  yet  it  will  seem  none  the  less  frightful  to  those  who 
can  discern  it.  but  rather  the  more  so,  when  it  is  found  that 
scientific  hypotheses  are  apparently  excluding  religious  dog- 
mas from  domains  of  research,  which  have  long  been  claimed 
as  the  sole  province  of  revelation. 

X 


lyS  TJie  Schism  in  Psydiology.  [part  i. 

The  Schism  in  Psychology. 
In  psychology,  for  example,  the  two  antagonists  have  long 
been  settling  into  a  divided  empire.  On  the  rational  side  of 
the  science  may  be  traced  three  successive  stages  of  departure 
from  the  revealed  doctrine  of  the  soul.  In  the  first  and  legiti- 
mate stage  of  healthful  separation  and  progress,  came  the  de- 
cline of  the  false  biblical  psychology  of  the  mediaeval  Church. 
It  was  the  period  when  the  ghosts,  witches  and  demons,  which 
had  so  long  haunted  the  region  of  the  soul,  were  fleeing  be- 
fore the  dawn  of  free  thought,  and  the  human  mind,  escaping 
from  its  cloistered  reveries,  began  to  observe  inductively  its 
own  phenomena,  faculties  and  laws.  In  the  face  of  the  eccle- 
siastical statutes  and  maledictions  against  witchcraft,  John 
Weir,  a  humane  physician  of  Cleves,  and  Reginald  Scott,  an 
enlightened  English  lawyer,  had  opened  the  way  to  medical 
psychology  by  exposing  the  frightful  atrocities  inflicted  upon 
lunatics,  and  urging  that  they  be  treated  as  patients,  rather 
than  as  mere  demoniacs  and  criminals.  The  sceptical  move- 
ment of  Montaigne  had  combined  with  Protestant  attacks 
upon  monasticism,  penance  and  purgatory,  to  clear  the  whole 
field  of  psychological  research.  Lord  Bacon,  too,  had  already 
sketched,  among  his  reconstructed  sciences,  more  exact  theo- 
ries of  body  and  soul,  with  a  logic  and  ethics  which  should 
treat  of  the  intellect  and  the  will,  and  though  he  applied  his 
new  organon  mainly  to  physics,  had  expressly  held  it  to  be 
also  applicable  in  the  psychical  region  to  the  operations  of 
memory,  judgment,  anger,  fear,  shame,  as  well  as  those  of 
heat,  light  and  vegetation.  Rene  Descartes,  usually  claimed 
as  the  founder  of  modern  psychology,  returning  to  the  stand- 
point of  Augustine,  had  given  the  death-blow  to  the  whole 
scholastic  pneumatology,  with  its  complex  series  of  vegetative, 
appetitive,  sensitive  souls,  by  sharply  distinguishing  the  think- 
ing mind  from  the  animal  body  as  a  separate  entity,  and 
treating  of  its  ideas,  volitions  and  affections  as  purely  immate- 
rial phenomena.  Benedict  Spinoza,  as  a  disciple  of  Descartes, 
in  his  profound  treatise  upon  Ethics,  had  explored  those  fun- 
damental relations  between  psychology  and  ontology,  which 
have  filled  so  large  a  space  in  all  subsequent  philosophy,  from 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Psychology.  1 79 

Leibnitz  to  Hegel.  Thomas  Hobbes  of  Malmesbury,  in  his 
crude  treatise  on  Human  Nature,  at  the  same  time  disclosed 
those  superficial  relations  of  psychology  with  physiology, 
which  have  since  been  so  much  more  scientifically  treated  by 
Hartley,  Erasmus,  Darwin  and  Maudsley.  John  Locke,  as  a 
follower  of  Hobbes  and  opponent  of  Descartes,  then  led  the 
way,  by  his  flimous  Essay  on  the  Human  Understanding,  to 
the  inductive  investigation  of  the  intellect  itself,  with  inquiries 
into  its  powers  of  sensation  and  reflection,  and  into  the  origin 
and  association  of  the  ideas  they  afford.  Antony  Astley 
Cooper,  Earl  of  Shaftesbury,  as  a  friendly  critic  of  Locke  and 
forerunner  of  Hutcheson,  in  his  elegant  "  Inquiry  concerning 
Virtue,"  restored  to  ethical  psychology  the  theory  of  a  moral 
sense  or  natural  perception  of  the  sublime  and  beautiful  in 
moral  actions.  Godfrey  Leibnitz,  in  his  "  New  Essays  on  the 
Human  Understanding,"  sought  the  just  mean  between  Des- 
cartes and  Locke,  whilst  by  his  "Monadology"  and  "Pre- 
established  Harmony,"  he  probed  for  the  first  time  the  essen- 
tial relations  of  body  and  soul.  Christian  Wolf,  as  the  pupil 
of  Leibnitz,  assigned  mental  science  to  its  due  place  in  the 
philosophical  encyclopedia,  not  only  distinguishing  it  from 
anthropology,  under  the  name  of  psychology,  which  it  had 
borne  since  the  time  of  Goclenius,  but  further  dividing  it  into 
rational  and  empirical  psychology.  Alexander  Baumgarten, 
also  of  the  Leibnitz-Wolfian  school,  wrote  the  first  treatise,  in- 
felicitously  styled  "yEsthetic,"  treating  of  the  imaginative 
taste  or  faculty  of  perceiving  and  judging  the  beautiful  in  na- 
ture, in  art,  and  in  literature,  since  investigated  by  Kaimes, 
Burke  and  Allison.  David  Hume,  meanwhile,  as  the  astute 
critic  of  Locke,  in  his  ."Enquiry  concerning  the  Human  Un- 
derstanding," had  won  the  distinction  now  accorded  him,  of 
discovering  that  Scylla  of  scepticism,  upon  which  a  mere  em- 
pirical p.sychology  must  ever  be  stranded.  Immanuel  Kant, 
as  the  subtle  critic  of  Hume,  then  achieved  in  his  "  Critique 
of  the  Pure  Reason,"  the  corresponding  merit  of  disclosing 
that  Charybdis  of  mysticism,  in  which  a  mere  rational  p.sy- 
chology cannot  but  be  whelmed,  by  maintaining  our  knowledge 
to  be  the  sheer  product  of  our  own  cognitive  faculties,  which 
he  described  as  threefold;  the  sense,  with  its  intuitive  forms 


i8o  The  Schism  in  Psychology.  [part  i. 

of  time  and  space;  the  understanding,  with  its  conceptive 
categories  of  quantity,  quahty,  relation  and  modahty  ;  and  the 
reason,  with  its  regulative  ideas  of  God,  the  soul  and  the 
world,  pronounced  theoretically  false,  though  practically  true. 
At  length  Sir  William  Hamilton,  as  the  erudite  critic  of  all 
schools,  in  his  "Discussions,"  "Dissertations"  and  "Lec- 
tures," may  be  said  to  have  organized  scientific  psychology, 
by  classifying  the  mental  phenomena  as  cognitions,  feelings 
and  volitions,  by  treating  systematically  of  the  corresponding 
mental  faculties,  and  by  formulating  the  corresponding  mental 
laws  which  constitute  the  psychological  sciences  of  Logic,  Es- 
thetics and  Ethics.  And  since  that  time,  a  host  of  eager  inves- 
tigators from  different  points  of  view,  such  as  Spencer,  Bain 
and  Maudsley,  Jouffroy,  Ribot  and  Janet,  Hickock,  Porter 
and  McCosh,  Ulrici,  Brentano  and  Lotze,  have  been  pursuing 
the  scientific  study  of  mind,  considered  as  a  subtle  organism, 
regulated  by  physical  and  mental  laws. 

During  all  this  period,  however,  in  the  second  stage  of  in- 
difference, was  growing  up  a  mere  speculative  psychology,  in 
place  of  that  true  biblical  psychology  which  still  held  its 
ground.  For  the  Scripture  doctrines  of  the  creation,  regen- 
eration and  glorification  of  the  soul,  were  gradually  substi- 
tuted various  conflicting  hypotheses  concerning  its  origin,  de- 
velopment and  destiny.  As  to  the  first  of  these  problems, 
there  arose  the  two  rival  schools  of  spiritualists  and  material- 
ists. According  to  the  former,  the  mind  is  essentially  imma- 
terial. It  had  been  long  taught  in  the  Church,  by  fathers  and 
schoolmen,  such  as  Augustine  and  Aquinas,  that  the  soul  is  a 
pure  spiritual  essence,  created  in  the  body  at  birth  and  sepa- 
rable from  it  at  death  ;  and  the  early  psychologists  endeavored 
to  use  this  dogma  as  a  scientific  theory,  with  more  or  less 
freedom  from  religious  prejudice.  There  were  at  first  general 
assertions  of  the  mind's  separate  subsistence.  Count  Miran- 
dola,  at  the  very  dawn  of  Italian  learning,  as  a  Platonist,  had 
defended  the  spirituality  of  the  soul  with  ascetic  rigor.  Sir 
John  Davis,  expressing  English  opinion  before  Hobbes,  in  a 
philosophical  poem  entitled  "  Know  Thyself,"  described  the 
soul  of  man  as  self-subsistent,  indep'endent  of  the  senses  and 
humors,   wielding   the  body  as  its   instrument  and   diffused 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Psychology.  l8l 

through  all  its  parts  like  the  morning  light  through  the  trans- 
parent air. 

But  by  degrees  the  spiritualistic  movement  became  more 
scientific.  The  first  step  was  simply  that  of  sundering  mind 
from  matter.  Descartes,  the  father  of  systematic  spiritual- 
ism, in  his  "  Meditations,"  with  the  terse  motto  "  I  think, 
therefore  I  am,"  defined  the  mind  as  a  something  which 
thinks,  or  a  thinking  substance,  in  distinction  from  matter, 
which  is  an  extended  substance,  compounded  and  divisible. 
Sir  Kenelm  Digby,  one  of  the  brilliant  writers  of  the  day, 
soon  afterwards  published  at  Paris  "A  Treatise  declaring  the 
Operations  and  Nature  of  Man's  Soul,"  in  which  he  distin- 
guished mind  from  matter  as  an  immaterial  or  spiritual  sub- 
stance, without  parts  and  local  motions.  The  English  Pla- 
tonists  generally,  such  as  Henry  More,  John  Smith  and  Nor- 
ris,  also  maintained  the  Cartesian  definition  of  the  soul,  though 
with  apologetic  motives,  and  were  followed  by  a  long  train  of 
controversial  writers,  lay  as  well  as  clerical,  such  as  Loude, 
Burthogge,  Fleming,  and  at  length  Andrew  Baxter,  whose 
"Enquiry  into  the  Nature  of  the  Human  Soul"  was  designed 
to  maintain  its  immateriality  on  the  ground  that  matter  is 
inert,  without  self-action,  and  movable  only  by  some  spiritual 
being. 

The  next  step  taken  was  that  of  rendering  mind  like  matter. 
Leibnitz,  advancing  between  Descartes  and  Locke,  in  his 
"  Monadology,"  or  Doctrine  of  Atoms,  towards  the  views  of 
the  English  physician,  Glisson,  on  the  energetic  nature  of 
substance,  and  of  Cudworth,  on  the  plastic  force  in  nature, 
conceived  matter,  in  its  essence,  to  be  as  living  and  percipient 
as  mind,  and  defined  the  soul  a  conscious  monad  or  thinking 
force,  in  distinction  from  mere  material  monads  or  vital  forces, 
such  as  animals  and  plants.  Wolf  adopted  the  Leibnitzian 
definition  of  matter  and  mind  as  metaphysical  points,  but  de- 
nied that  material  monads  are  percipient  or  can  have  ideas. 
Kant,  agreeing  with  Hume  rather  than  with  Wolf,  in  his 
"  Critique  of  the  Pure  Reason,"  held  the  soul  to  be  an  inscru- 
table substance,  whose  immateriality  can  neither  be  proved  nor 
denied;  yet  in  a  work  entitled  "Psychical  Monadology,"  he 
boldly  conjectured   that  the   mind  perceiving  and  the  thing 


1 82  TJic  Schism  in  Psychology.  [parti. 

perceived,  the  internal  and  the  external  substance,  may  both 
be  thinking  essences,  homogeneous  and  co-percipient ;  thus 
approximating  the  spiritualism  of  Leibnitz.  The  final  step 
has  been  that  of  reducing  matter  to  a  mere  psychical  mani- 
festation. Berkley,  it  will  be  remembered,  had  argued  that 
there  exist  nothing  but  percipient  minds  and  their  ideas',  or 
spiritual  substances  and  their  phenomena.  Shopenhauer,  in 
opposition  to  Kant,  held  the  soul  to  be  immediately  knowable, 
by  internal  perception,  as  a  conscious  will,  supporting  phe- 
nomena, and  pronounced  materialism  impossible,  according 
to  the  axiom,  "  No  object  without  a  subject."  Fichte,  Schelling 
and  Hegel,  taking  the  idealistic  road  from  Kant,  lost  them- 
selves in  a  kind  of  universal  spirituality  of  both  mind  and 
matter.  Herbart,  Beneke  and  Lotze,  taking  the  realistic  road 
from  Kant,  have  described  the  soul  respectively  as  a  spaceless 
essence,  acting  at  a  single  point,  as  an  immaterial"  nucleus  of 
psychical  forces,  as  a  conscious  monad  or  spiritual  atom,  co- 
existing with  a  plurality  of  conscious  and  unconscious  atoms. 
It  will  be  observed  that  the  spiritualistic  movement,  at  its  ex- 
treme, tends  to  convert  all  matter  into  mere  mind. 

According  to  the  rival  school,  however,  the  soul  is  essen- 
tially material.  And  the  opinion  is  as  old  as  its  opposite.  It 
had  been  held  by  Democritus  and  Epicurus  that  the  mind  is 
but  a  composition  of  etherial  atoms,  such  as  air  and  fire,  which 
is  dissolved  and  lost  at  death ;  and  this  notion,  as  derived 
through  Lucretius  and  Seneca,  had  apparently  been  counte- 
nanced by  Tertullian.  But  with  the  rise  of  the  Christian  dog- 
mas of  carnal  depravity  and  the  separate  diseihbodied  state,  it 
gradually  disappeared  during  the  middle  ages,  to  be  revived 
only  by  successive  conquests  of  physical  speculation  over  re- 
ligious prejudice.  The  movement  began  with  inquiries  con- 
cerning incorporate  spirit.  The  Italian  Pomponace,  as  an 
Aristotelian,  may  be  said  to  have  led  the  way,  by  his  concep- 
tion of  an  animating  soul  inseparable  from  the  body.  Cam- 
panella  described  the  soul  as  a  corporeal  spirit,  subtle,  lu- 
minous, deriving  all  its  knowledge  through  the  senses.  It 
was  one  of  the  maxims  of  Montaigne,  that  the  senses  are  the 
beginning  and  the  end  of  all  knowledge.  John  Chrj'sostom 
Magnen,  a  French  professor  at  Pavia,  embodied  the  growing 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Psychology.  1 83 

sentiment  in  a  popular  work,  with  the  significant  title  "Demo- 
critu.s  Reviving." 

Thenceforward  several  more  scientific  departures  may  be 
traced.  The  first  was  simply  that  of  connecting  the  mind 
with  sense.  Peter  Gassendi,  whose  "  Philosophical  System  of 
Epicurus"  has  distinguished  him  as  the  father  of  modern  ma- 
terialism, and  whose  playful  invocation  to  Descartes,  "O 
Spirit!"  provoked  the  stinging  retort,  "O  Matter!"  had  em- 
phasized the  Epicurean  conceit  that  ideas  are  the  mental 
images  of  material  objects,  derived  through  the  senses. 
Hobbes,  issuing  his  book  in  time  for  it  to  receive  a  dying  kiss 
of  approval  from  Gassendi,  described  such  ideas  or  images  as 
directly  impressed  upon  the  brain,  and  there  decaying  and  re- 
viving, according. to  their  relative  intensity.  Locke,  agreeing 
with  Gassendi  rather  than  with  Hobbes,  added  reflection  to 
sensation  as  a  source  of  ideas,  but  in  opposition  to  the  Carte- 
sian definition  of  mind,  suggested  that  matter  itself  might  not 
be  incapable  of  thought  or  of  reflection  as  well  as  sensation. 
The  English  free-thinkers  generally,  such  as  Layton,  Coward 
and  Collins,  eagerly  seized  upon  this  crude  conjecture,  and 
strangely  enough  were  joined  by  some  clerical  recruits,  such 
as  Dodwell,  Bold  and  Perronet,  in  the  supposed  interest  of 
orthodoxy.  The  Abbe  Condillac,  a  French  admirer  of  Locke, 
in  his  celebrated  treatise  on  "  Sensation,"  at  length  proceeded 
to  resolve  reflection  itself  into  sensation,  or  to  transform  all 
ideas  into  sensations,  illustrating  the  process  by  an  imaginary 
human  being,  encased  in  marble  and  allowed  successively  to 
acquire  the  different  senses  and  combine  the  corresponding 
ideas  by  acts  of  attention,  memory  and  judgment. 

The  next  step  was  that  of  merging  the  mind  in  the  brain. 
Hartley,  who  had  been  studying  Hobbes  and  Newton  as  well 
as  Locke,  with  the  method  of  a  physician,  in  his  "  Observations 
on  Man,"  represented  the  white  medullary  substance  of  the 
brain  and  nervous  system  as  the  instrument  of  sensation,  ever 
vibrating,  like  an  exquisite  harp,  to  external  impressions  un- 
der the  laws  of  association,  and  thus  originating  all  our  sim- 
ple and  complex  ideas.  Charles  Bonnet,  a  Swiss  physician, 
somewhat  more  crudely  than  Hartley,  described  the  mind,  in 
his  "Essay  on  Psychology,"  as   operating  onl\' through  cer- 


184  TJie  Schism  in  PsycJiology.  [part  i. 

tain  elastic  fibres  of  the  brain,  to  which  all  ideas  are  attached, 
and  whose  structure  and  movements  should,  therefore,  form 
the  first  subjects  of  mental  science.  George  Prochaska,  a  dis- 
tinguished German  physician,  at  the  close  of  the  last  century, 
enunciated  a  growing  opinion  that  different  parts  of  the  brain 
have  different  mental  functions,  which  admit  of  direct  physio- 
logical investigation.  Dr.  Gall,  combining  this  theory  with 
the  physiognomical  principles  of  Lavater,  then  argued,  in  his 
work  on  "The  Functions  of  the  Brain,"  that  the  compacted 
organs  growing  within  the  skull,  determine  its  exterior  size 
and  shape,  and  may  be  found  expressed  on  its  surface,  where, 
with  the  aid  of  Dr.  Spurzheim,  he  mapped  as  many  as  thirty 
mental  faculties.  Cabanis,  the  physician  of  Mirabcau,  emerg- 
ing from  the  French  revolution,  with  his  "Treatise  on  the 
Physical  and  Moral  Constitutions,"  boldly  declared  the  nerves 
to  be  the  whole  man,  and  reduced  all  sensation  and  reflection 
to  the  action  and  re-action  of  the  brain,  which  he  vaguely 
likened  to  a  gland  secreting  thought,  as  the  liver  secretes  bile 
or  the  stomach  digests  food.  Count  de  Tracy,  author  of  the 
famous  "Ideology"  or  Doctrine  of  Ideas,  proceeding  on  the 
physiological  principles  of  Cabanis,  after  the  manner  of  Con- 
dillac,  analyzed  all  our  cognitions,  feelings  and  volitions  into 
mere  forms  of  nervous  sensibility  and  cerebral  action. 

The  final  step  has  been  that  of  reducing  the  mind  to  a 
physical  force.  Dubois  Reymond,  of  Berlin,  having  shown  the 
analogy  and  connection  between  the  nervous  force  and  elec- 
tricity, likened  the  brain  to  a  voltaic  battery,  receiving  and 
discharging  currents  of  sensation  and  volition  as  a  miniature 
telegraph.  Dr.  Maudsley,  in  his  acute  treatise  on  the  "  Phy- 
siology and  Pathology  of  Mind,"  has  defined  the  mind  scien- 
tifically as  an  exalted  natural  force,  developed  from  the  infe- 
rior chemical  and  vital  forces  of  the  body  and  concentrated  in 
the  brain,  through  which  organ  thought  is  evolved,  memory 
organized,  and  the  will  conserved  as  the  momentum  of  per- 
sonal energy.  Professor  Barker  of  Pennsylvania  University, 
in  his  "  Correlation  of  Vital  and  Physical  Forces;"  bridging 
the  chasm  at  which  Maudsley  pauses,  has  argued  that  reason, 
intelligence,  emotion,  in  short,  thought-force,  like  muscle 
force,  comes  from  the  food,  which  is  itself  but  potential  heat 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Psychology.  185 

and  motion,  and  may  be  expended  again  as  muscle  force  in 
the  physical  efforts  of  speech  and  gesture,  and  possibly 
measured  by  the  foot  or  the  pound.  Professor  Huxley,  as  if 
to  illustrate  such  views  practically,  whilst  delivering  his  well- 
known  lecture  on  the  "  Physical  Basis  of  Life,"  imagined  him- 
self clad  in  the  "  Peau  de  Chagrin  "  of  Balzac,  a  magical  wild 
ass's  skin,  which  caused  the  wearer  to  shrink  toward  nothing- 
ness with  every  gratified  wish,  and  explained  how  he  proposed, 
after  that  literary  effort,  to  transubstantiate  sheep  into  man, 
or  mutton  into  thought,  unless  perchance,  being  shipwrecked 
on  his  homeward  journey,  he  should  prematurely  relapse  to 
lobster.  It  will  be  observed  that  the  materialistic  movement, 
at  its  extreme,  aims  to  convert  all  mind  into  mere  matter. 

As  to  the  second  problem,  the  conduct  of  the  will,  there 
arose  also  two  rival  schools,  the  necessitarians  and  libertarians. 
According  to  the  former,  the  soul  is  a  mere  necessary  agent. 
It  had  been  the  orthodox  teaching  from  Augustine  to  Aqui- 
nas, that  the  will  of  man  acts  under  the  predestination  of  God, 
and  by  the  fall  has  lost  all  power  to  do  good ;  and  this  dogma 
passed  into  all  the  earlier  psychological  speculations  at  the 
Reformation.  Luther,  in  his  controversy  with  Erasmus,  wrote 
a  treatise  on  "  The  Slavery  of  the  Will,"  maintaining  its  total 
moral  disability  or  loss  of  liberty  in  spiritual  things,  and  liken- 
ing its  passive  agency  to  a  saw  in  the  hands  of  a  carpenter. 
Calvin  discussed  the  subject  learnedly  against  the  sophists  of 
the  Sorbonne,  as  he  termed  his  antagonists,  describing  the 
will  as  naturally  determined  by  the  understanding,  and  there- 
fore diseased,  fettered  and  necessarily  evil  as  God  is  necessa- 
rily good.  Melancthon,  recasting  the  Aristotelian  ethics, 
made  the  will  of  God  as  expressing  His  wisdom  and  justice 
the  supreme  law  of  morals ;  described  free  agency  as  part  of 
that  divine  image  which  has  been  lost  though  not  annihilated ; 
and  represented  natural  causes,  even  the  stars,  as  operating 
necessarily  upon  human  affairs,  except  when  divinely  inter- 
rupted. And  Cornelius  Jansen,  whose  "  Augustinus "  was 
condemned  by  the  pope,  re-constructed  that  school  of  predes- 
tinarian  ethics  from  which  Pascal  assailed  the  casuistry  of  the 
Jesuits. 

But  gradually  several  more  scientific  forms  of  determinism 


1 86  The  Schism  in  Psychology.  [part  i. 

appeared.  It  was  at  first  attempted  to  link  the  will  with  divine 
impulse.  Descartes,  basing  his  whole  psychology  upon 
theism,  had  represented  body  and  soul  as  two  diverse  sub- 
stances, mechanically  co-operating  in  perception  and  volition, 
with  the  concurrence  or  assistance  of  God,  rendered  in  some 
incomprehensible  manner.  Louis  de  la  Forge,  physician  at 
Saumur,  an  ardent  disciple  of  Descartes,  in  a  "  Treatise  on  the 
Human  Spirit,"  then  explained  by  the  theory  of  occasional 
causes  how  the  will  of  God  is  the  real  cause,  and  body  and 
soul  the  occasional  or  exciting  causes  of  their  correspondent 
ideas  and  sensations,  their  reciprocal  volitions  and  motions. 
Pierre  Silvain  Regis,  a  still  more  enthusiastic  expositor  of 
Descartes,  in  his  "  System  of  Philosophy,"  substituted  for  the 
theory  of  occasional  causes  that  of  second  causes,  according 
to  which  the  will  of  God  as  the  efficient  First  Cause  is  ever 
exerted  through  body  and  soul,  as  second  causes  acting  and 
re-acting  with  their  senses  and  ideas,  like  two  puppets  moved 
by  a  concealed  operator.  Spinoza,  dissatisfied  with  such  ex- 
planations, boldly  rejected  the  Cartesian  dualism  of  body  and 
soul,  matter  and  mind,  and  merged  them  both  in  Deity  as  the 
one  absolute  substance  of  which  they  are  but  modifications, 
the  sole  universal  agent  of  which  they  are  instruments.  Leib- 
nitz, in  order  to  mediate  between  Descartes  and  Spinoza,  then 
imagined  an  infinite  series  of  active  substances  or  monads 
issuing  from  the  great  First  Substance  or  Monad,  with  pre- 
established  harmony  of  mind  and  matter,  body  and  soul,  like 
that  of  two  perfect  watches  so  adjusted  as  to  keep  time  to- 
gether; or  a  machine  servant  and  master,  so  contrived  as  to 
work  with  each  other.  And  these  speculations  as  pursued 
by  Geulinx,  Wolf,  and  Bonnet,  would  have  reduced  man  to  a 
mere  spiritual  automaton  impelled  by  divine  power. 

It  was  next  attempted  to  chain  the  will  to  necessary  mo- 
tives. Hobbes,  in  a  "  Letter  upon  Liberty  and  Necessity," 
had  defined  volition,  the  last  excited  appetite,  and  represented 
the  will,  in  its  fancied  freedom,  no  more  self-determined  than 
a  wooden  top  spinning  hither  and  thither,  without  knowing 
what  has  lashed  it  into  motion.  Locke,  agreeing  virtually 
with  Hobbes,  in  his  chapter  "On  Power,"  held  the  will  to  be 
self-determined  only  so  far  as  moved  by  uneasiness  or  desire, 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific   Psychology.  1 8/ 

being  continually  driven  toward  good  and  evil  in  spite  of  itself, 
as  when  one  is  forced  into  agreeable  company,  or  dragged 
down  with  a  falling  bridge.  Antony  Collins,  whose  celebrated 
"  Philosophical  Inquiry  into  Human  Liberty "  marked  the 
crisis  of  the  controversy,  then  defended  the  moral  necessity 
of  the  will  or  its  determination  by  the  reason  and  senses,  as 
the  only  theory  consistent  with  our  experience,  with  the  law 
of  causality,  with  the  dignity  of  a  rational  agent,  with  the 
divine  foreknowledge,  with  rewards  and  punishments  and  with 
true  morality.  Jonathan  Edwards,  reasoning  as  a  philosopher 
as  well  as  divine,  with  his  masterly  "  Inquiry  into  the  Free- 
dom of  the  Will,"  then  assailed  successively  the  theories  of 
self-determination,  of  indifference,  and  of  contingency,  as  in- 
volving endless  contradictions,  as  destructive  of  the  rational 
and  moral  faculties,  and  as  tending  to  universal  uncertainty 
and  confusion.  And  soon  these  speculations  were  pushed  to 
the  most  opposite  conclusions,  in  one  direction  by  the  French 
fatalists,  such  as  Diderot,  La  Mettrie,  and  D'Holbach ;  in 
another,  by  the  English  materialists,  Priestley,  Belsham  and 
Godwin  ;  and  in  another,  by  the  American  predestinarians, 
such  as   Dwight,  Hopkins,  and  Emmons. 

But  at  length,  as  the  final  step  in  this  direction,  it  was 
attempted  to  bind  the  will  in  mental  laws.  Hartley,  re- 
stating principles  derived  by  Hobbes  from  Aristotle,  had  re- 
presented all  reasoning  and  affection,  all  logic  and  ethics,  as 
the  mere  result  of  association,  a  mental  process  of  combining 
the  nervous  vibrations,  or  ideas  and  feelings,  into  judgments 
and  habits,  under  fixed  laws  by  which  the  will  is  necessarily 
determined  in  its  action.  Erasmus  Darwin,  advancing  beyond 
Hartley  in  a  materialistic  direction,  subordinated  both  sensa- 
tion and  volition  to  the  laws  of  association,  and  enchained  the 
will  in  acquired  habits  or  catenated  trains  of  nervous  and 
muscular  motions.  James  Mill,  advancing  beyond  Hartley  in 
a  spiritualistic  direction,  with  his  "  Analysis  of  the  Phenomena 
of  the  Human  Mind,"  not  only  traced  the  laws  by  which  ideas 
associate  themselves  in  clusters  and  series,  but  defined  the 
will  itself  as  nothing  more  than  the  power  of  certain  interest- 
ing ideas,  among  them  the  complex  idea  of  self,  which,  when 
decomposed,  will  vanish  into  an  unknown  quantity,  afterwards 


I S8  TJie  Schism  in  Psychology.  [part  i. 

termed  by  his  son,  John  Stuart  Mill,  a  mere  series  of  feelings, 
or  possibilities  of  feeling.  The  later  Scottish  associationalists 
generally,  however,  such  as  Stewart,  Brown,  and  Mcintosh, 
have  taken  a  conservative  position,  involving  the  will  in  men- 
tal laws,  but  allowing  it  a  special  control  of  those  laws.  The 
recent  German  associationalists,  such  as  Herbart,  Beneke, 
and  Lotze,  pursuing  the  path  opened  by  the  elder  Mill,  have 
pressed  mental  laws  to  the  extreme  of  obliterating  all  original 
distinct  faculties,  by  variously  asserting  the  will  itself  as  an 
effort  determined  by  the  strongest  masses  of  ideas,  a  balancing 
of  psychical  forces  and  products,  and  a  resultant  movement 
of  combined  monads  or  ideas.  The  latest  English  associa- 
tionalists, such  as  Lewes,  Bain,  Maudsley,  and  Spencer,  pur- 
suing the  path  opened  by  the  elder  Darwin,  have  brought 
mental  laws  under  the  more  general  physical  laws  of  correla- 
tion, conservation,  and  evolution,  by  tracing  the  growth  of 
will  out  of  nervous  force  into  a  collective  impulse;  the  trans- 
mission of  a  pre-determining  organization  with  cumulative 
power  from  generation  to  generation ;  the  secular  development 
of  human  out  of  animal  forms ;  the  spontaneous  generation  of 
life  upon  our  globe,  and  the  origin  of  the  globe  itself  in  a  pri- 
mitive nebula;  and  have  thus  justified  the  bold  assertion  of 
Huxley  that  thought,  memory,  reason,  conscience,  all  our  art, 
philosophy  and  religion  once  lay  latent  in  a  fiery  cloud.  At 
the  necessitarian  extreme,  the  will  would  appear  to  be  little 
more  than  a  developed  force. 

According  to  the  libertarians,  however,  man  is  a  free  moral 
agent.  And  the  opinion  has  been  defended  against  its  oppo- 
site from  the  earliest  times.  It  had  been  held  successively  by 
Epicurus,  by  Pelagius,  and  by  Duns  Scotus,  that  the  will  is 
independent  both  of  causes  and  ideas,  that  it  is  a  God-given 
faculty  of  choosing  between  good  and  evil  with  the  aid  of  the 
Holy  Spirit;  and  that  it  is  superior  to  the  understanding,  un- 
der the  authority  of  the  Church.  And  these  tenets  at  the 
Reformation  were  re-affirmed  in  controversies,  partly  dog- 
matic, and  partly  philosophical.  Erasmus,  as  the  antagonist 
of  Luther,  wrote  his  treatise  on  "  The  Freedom  of  the  Will," 
illustrating  a  frequent  alliance  of  that  theory  with  classic  taste 
and  culture,     Bellarmin,  in  his  Disputations,  defined  the  will 


CHAP.  III.]  Scimtific  Psychology.  189 

a  power  of  choosing  or  resolving,  and  represented  the  divine 
predestination  as  guided  by  a  foreknowledge  of  human  free- 
dom. Arminius,  remonstrating  against  the  Dutch  predestina- 
rians,  pronounced  the  free  will  a  secondary  cause  of  salvation, 
when  it  co-operates  with  the  divine  grace  which  has  excited 
it.  Socinus,  in  his  Theological  Prelections,  rejected  predesti- 
nation altogether,  leaving  the  will,  even  though  weakened  by 
its  own  sins,  still  free  to  accept  or  reject  divine  aid.  And 
Loyola,  for  the  defence  of  the  hierarchy,  had  already  organ- 
ized that  school  of  libertarian  casuistry  by  which  the  will  was 
practically  as  well  as  theoretically  absolved  from  the  claims 
of  morality. 

But  by  degrees  the  growing  spirit  of  indeterminism  as- 
sumed more  scientific  guises.  The  first  effort  was  to  free  the 
will  from  divine  constraint.  Henry  More,  the  first  of  the 
Cambridge  Platonists  or  Latitudinarians,  in  his  "  Ethical 
Manual,"  after  grouping  the  passions  as  useful  instruments 
of  reason,  defended  the  freedom  of  the  will  against  predestina- 
tion, as  the  essential  condition  of  morality.  Cudwoith,  the 
learned  chief  of  the  school,  projected  a  comprehensive  argu- 
ment against  the  material  fatalists,  who  suppose  a  universe  of 
mere  matter  and  motion;  the  immoral  fatalists  who  imagine  a 
God  decreeing  the  evil  as  well  as  the  good  in  us,  and  the  moral 
fatalists  who  assert  morality  in  God  but  necessity  in  us  to  do 
good  or  evil  without  freedom  and  responsibility ;  these  several 
antagonists  being  successively  opposed,  the  first  with  his 
"  Intellectual  System  of  the  Universe,"  or  theory  of  uncon- 
scious mind  in  nature  ;  the  second,  with  his  "  Eternal  and  Im- 
mutable Morality,"  or  doctrine  of  an  essential  goodness  in  the 
very  nature  of  things  rather  than  in  the  mere  will  of  God;  and 
the  third,  with  his  "  Treatise  on  Free  Will,"  or  the  spontaneous 
liberty  of  moral  agents.  Lange,  Rudiger,  and  Crusius,  to- 
gether with  a  numerous  body  of  German  Theologians,  vigo- 
rously assailed  the  pre-established  harmonism  of  Leibnitz  and 
Wolf,  as  incompatible  with  strict  theism,  with  free  agency 
and  with  moral  distinctions.  And  indeed  the  whole  school 
of  predestinarian  ethics  was  attacked  with  philosophical  wea- 
pons from  the  most  opposite  points,  by  the  Jesuitical  casuists, 
such  as  Suarez,  Escobar,  and  Gonzalez,  by  the  latitudinarian 


IQO  TJie  Schism  in  Psycliology.  [part  i. 

churchmen,  such  as  Whitcote,  Tillotson,  StilHngfleet,  and  by 
the  hbertine  courtiers,  such  as  Bohngbroke,  Rochefoucauld, 
and  Mandeville. 

The  next  effort  in  this  direction  was  to  free  the  will  from  ne- 
cessary motives.  Cudworth  had  already  written  his  brief  post- 
humous, Treatise  on  Free  Will  against  Hobbes,  distinguish- 
ing moral  agents  from  mere  machines  or  animals,  as  alone 
capable  of  self-determination,  of  praise  and  blame,  and  divine 
rewards  and  punishments.  Samuel  Clarke,  who  opposed  the 
automatism  of  Leibnitz  as  well  as  Collins,  in  his  "  Remarks 
upon  the  Philosophical  Inquiry  concerning  Human  Liberty," 
then  maintained  that  free  will  is  self-motion,  or  the  proper  ac- 
tion of  the  soul;  that  motives  or  judgments  next  preceding  its 
action  are  distinguishable  from  the  action  itself;  that  such  mo- 
tives and  judgments  if  merely  acting  upon  it  without  its  acting 
for  itself,  would  reduce  man  to  a  passive  machine;  and  that 
he  differs  from  the  brutes,  whose  action  is  but  spontaneous, 
by  being  able  to  act  freely  and  with  a  sense  of  right  and 
wrong.  Richard  Price,  discussing  the  "  Doctrine  of  Philo- 
sophical Necessity"  with  Priestly,  maintained  that  even 
animals  possess  liberty  or  self-motion;  that  such  liberty 
is  not  only  itself  possible  but  a  matter  of  our  conscious- 
ness; and  that  it  may  even  include  motives  considered 
as  the  occasions  or  ends  of  our  acting,  and  not  absurdly 
imagined  to  be  the  physical  or  efficient  causes  of  action. 
Thomas  Reid,  with  more  subtle  analysis,  in  his  "Essays  on 
the  Active  Powers  of  Man,"  having  defined  free  will  as  activity 
or  a  power  of  causing  effects,  and  having  defended  it  as  a  men- 
tal fact  intuitively  discerned,  implied  in  moral  responsibility, 
and  essential  to  all  deliberate  plans  and  actions,  then  assailed 
the  opposite  theory,  maintaining  that  motives  are  mere  influ- 
ences and,  not  efficient  causes ;  that  the  best  motives  do  not 
always  influence  us ;  that  many  trifling  actions  are  done  with- 
out motive;  that  some  capricious  and  obstinate  actions  are  done 
against  motives; that  the  strongest  motive  only  prevails  through 
the  will  and  not  against  it;  and  that  uniform  conduct  is  as  con- 
sistent with  liberty  as  with  necessity.  Henry  Tappan,  ad- 
vancing beyond  Clarke  and  Reid,  in  his  "  Review  of  P^dwards' 
Inquiry,"  at  length  defined  the  will  a  conscious  self-moving 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Psychology.  I9I 

power,  indifferent  to  all  motives,  capable  of  obeying  cither 
reason  or  passion,  or  both  together,  or  neither,  with  the  pre- 
rogative in  any  case  of  a  contrar>'  choice.  And  these  opinions 
were  maintained,  more  or  less  philosophically,  in  England  by 
Whitby,  Taylor  and  Turnbull,  in  Scotland  by  Stewart,  Brown 
and  Mcintosh,  and  in  America  by  Taylor,  Beecher  and  Fin- 
ney, Bledsoe,  Whedon  and  Hazard.  But  the  final  effort 
has  been  to  free  the  will  from  mental  laws.  Kant,  in  his 
"  Critique  of  the  Practical  Reason,"  had  asserted  the  absolute 
freedom  of  the  moral  will  in  the  whole  transcendental  region ; 
representing  it  as  a  law  unto  itself,  superior  even  to  the  laws 
of  thought,  which  logically  exclude  as  problematical  what  it 
ever  affirms  as  real  respecting  God,  the  soul  and  the  world- 
Fichte,  recoiling  from  Spinoza  beyond  Kant,  in  his  "  System 
of  Ethics  according  to  the  Doctrine  of  Science,"  besides  re- 
ferring all  intelligence  to  our  own  spontaneous  activity,  ex- 
alted free-will  over  the  very  laws  of  morality  as  a  self-poised 
power,  determining  rights  and  duties  by  its  mere  rational  vo- 
lition. Coleridge,  recoiling  from  Hartley  beyond  Kant,  in  his 
"Aids  to  Reflection,"  not  only  ranked  the  speculative  reason  and 
will,  above  all  physical  laws,  in  contrast  with  the  inertia  of  the 
mineral,  the  sensitiveness  of  the  plant  and  the  spontaneity  of 
the  animal,  but  enthroned  it  as  a  spiritual  power  in  a  realm  of 
pure  spirit,  originating  its  own  acts,  without  the  need  of  mo- 
tives or  stimulants.  The  later  French  libertarians,  such  as 
Maine  de  Biran,  Cousin  and  Jouffroy,  pursuing  the  spiritual- 
istic path  indicated  by  Fichte,  have  pressed  free-will  toward 
absolute  control  of  all  mental  laws  by  variously  describing  it 
as  the  spiritual  cause  of  thought  and  action,  the  essence  of 
self  and  personality,  and  the  source  of  moral  worth  and  per- 
fection. And  the  recent  German  volitionalists,  such  as  Shop- 
enhauer,  Frauenstadt  and  Hartmann,  following  the  realistic 
path  from  Kant,  have  been  inclined  to  subordinate  all  physical 
as  well  as  mental  laws  to  mere  will  power,  by  tracing  its  gradual 
rise  and  intensification  from  the  blind  primordial  energy, 
through  the  successive  mechanical,  chemical  and  vital  forces, 
through  the  unconscious  instincts,  to  a  conscious  volition,  baf- 
fled by  universal  contradiction  and  suffering,  and  so  have 
landed  themselves   in   the  dismal  paradox  that  the  world,  as 


192  TJie  Schism  in  Psychology.  [part  i. 

we  know  it,  had  better  not  be,  having  originated  in  irrational 
vohtion  and  culminated  in  despairing  reason.  At  the  liberta- 
rian extreme,  the  will  would  thus  appear  to  be  scarcely  less 
than  a  creative  cause. 

As  to  the  remaining  problem,  the  destiny  of  the  soul,  there 
arose  the  two  schools  of  immortalists  and  mortalists.  Ac- 
cording to  the  former,  the  soul  is  naturally  immortal.  It  had 
been  repeated  from  Socrates  to  Cicero,  through  Augustine 
and  Aquinas,  with  cumulative  proofs,  that  the  human  spirit  is 
indestructible  by  death  or  sin,  or  any  other  power,  and  must 
live  eternally  in  woe  or  bliss.  And  this  dogma,  at  the  revival 
of  learning  and  religion,  prevailed  over  all  other  theories. 
Ficinus  restated  it  from  the  works  of  Plato ;  Cardinal  Niphus 
defended  it  against  the  Aristotelian  speculations  of  Pompona- 
tius;  and  at  length  the  Council  of  the  Lateran  confirmed  it  as 
an  article  of  faith,  rather  than  a  mere  philosophical  tenet. 
Protestant  writers  also  agreed  with  Romanists  in  maintaining 
it  as  a  strictly  revealed  truth  with  theological  arguments,  such 
as,  that  the  divine  eternity  is  a  guarantee  of  the  continued  ex- 
istence of  the  soul ;  that  the  divine  wisdom  would  be  frus- 
trated if  it  did  not  fulfill  the  end  of  its  being  and  the  promise 
of  its  powers ;  that  the  divine  goodness  could  not  consent  to 
the  extinction  of  its  noblest  hopes  and  yearnings ;  that  the 
divine  justice  requires' its  future  punishment  or  compensation; 
and,  in  a  word,  that  the  divine  glory  would  be  better  illus- 
trated by  its   immortality  than  by  its   destruction. 

But  with  psychological  speculation  came  more  scientific  ar- 
guments. The  first  class  was  the  ontological,  derived  from 
the  essential  nature  of  the  soul.  Descartes,  claiming  that  the 
Council  of  the  Lateran  had  authorized  such  philosophical  rea- 
sonings, offered  to  prove  to  the  Sorbonne,  that  the  dogma  of 
immortality  could  be  deduced  from  his  definition  of  the  soul, 
as  a  spiritual  essence,  wholly  distinct  from  the  body,  and  not 
doomed  to  perish  with  it  like  the  brutes,  which  are  but  ma- 
chines, without  souls.  Leibnitz  also  assumed  human  immor- 
tality in  his  metaphysics,  but  without  demonstrating  it.  George 
Frederick  Meier,  of  the  Leibnitzian  school,  in  his  "Proof  that 
the  Soul  lives  Eternally,"  besides  inferring  its  survival  after 
death  from  its  spirituality  and  persistence,  also  argued  on  the 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Psychology.  193 

principles  of  the  Monadology  and  Theodicea,  that  each  finite 
spirit,  by  conceiving  and  reflecting  the  Divine  Spirit,  or  abso- 
lute monad,  participates  in  His  eternal  nature  and  becomes 
essential  to  His  glory.  Moses  Mendelssohn,  the  hero  of 
Lessing  and  Goethe,  in  his  "  Phaedon,"  combining  Plato  with 
Leibnitz,  eloquently  maintained  the  absolute  simplicity,  the 
invariable  identity,  and  the  metaphysical  unity  of  the  thinking 
monad,  as  well  as  its  imperishable  union  with  God  as  the 
crowning  miracle  and  mirror  of  His  whole  creation.  And 
similar  arguments  for  the  so-called  natural  immortality  of  the 
soul  were  urged,  in  numerous  treatises,  by  the  English  spirit- 
ualists, such  as  Henry  More,  Norris,  Whitby,  Clark,  Collier 
and  Baxter.  Another  class  of  proofs  was  the  teleological,  de- 
rived from  the  obvious  design  of  the  soul.  Pascal  had  led  the 
way  to  such  reasoning  with  his  terse  logic,  "  If  man  is  not 
made  for  God,  why  is  he  only  happy  in  God  ?"  Reimarus, 
more  philosophically  applying  the  Leibnitzian  axiom  of  the 
sufficient  reason,  argued  that  the  immortality  of  the  rational 
soul  is  necessary  in  a  natural  economy  containing  nothing 
useless  or  aimless ;  that  if  its  yearnings  for  knowledge  and 
blessedness  hereafter  are  not  to  be  fulfilled,  it  is  but  a  contra- 
diction and  failure  worse  than  the  beasts ;  that  the  present  dis- 
proportion between  its  merits  and  rewards  demands  a  future 
reparation ;  and  that  as  nature  finds  its  chief  end  in  man,  so 
man  must  find  his  chief  end  in  God,  the  only  worthy  object 
and  consummation  of  his  best  desires.  Rousseau  included 
among  the  few  religious  sentiments  of  his  Savoyard  Vicar  the 
immortality  of  the  soul  as  a  deduction  from  its  moral  respon- 
sibility, in  contrast  with  the  distressing  inequalities  of  the 
present  social  condition.  Kant,  consistently  rejecting  the 
arguments  of  Mendelssohn  and  favoring  those  of  Rei- 
marus and  Rousseau,  denied  that  the  mere  essential,  identical 
and  incorruptible  nature  of  the  soul  can  be  proved,  but  simply 
claimed  its  future  continuance  as  a  postulate  of  the  pure, 
practical  reason,  which  requires  infinite  duration  for  the  pro- 
gressive coincidence  of  the  will  with  the  moral  law.  And 
similar  arguments  were  advanced  by  the  English  moralists, 
such  as  Herbert,  Shaftesbury  and  Morgan.  A  still  remaining 
class  of  proofs  was  the  analogical,  derived  from  the  general 
Z 


194  ^^^  Schism  in  Psychology.  [part  i. 

analogy  of  nature.  The  disciples  of  Wolf  and  the  earlier  ra- 
tionalists, in  addition  to  the  above  reasonings,  had  argued 
analogically  that  as  in  nature  there  is  no  annihilation,  but 
only  perpetual  renewal  of  life  from  death,  of  flowers  from 
seeds,  and  of  butterflies  from  worms,  so  man,  by  no  niore 
wondrous  metamorphosis,  may  be  born  into  a  future  state  and 
find  himself  in  new  moral  as  well  as  physical  relations  to  other 
worlds  and  their  inhabitants.  Bishop  Butler,  in  his  celebrated 
"Analogy  of  Religion  and  Nature,"  pursued  the  same  argu- 
ment with  logical  rigor,  reasoning  inductively  from  universal 
experience  that  living  creatures  pass  through  different  forms 
and  states  without  losing  their  identity;  that  we  ourselves 
every  seven,  ten  or  twenty  years  shed  the  atoms  and  entire 
organism  of  our  bodies,  and  sometimes  even  part  with  par- 
ticular organs ;  that  the  mind,  in  its  acts  of  reason,  memory 
and  affection,  subsists  independently  of  the  body,  and  often  in 
mortal  diseases  grows  more  vigorous  as  the  body  languishes; 
and  that  death  itself,  instead  of  being  like  a  sleep,  is  rather 
like  a  second  birth  into  a  new  social  state  as  natural,  as  free 
from  miracle  or  catastrophe,  in  the  view  of  higher  intelligences, 
as  the  cosmical  system  with  which  we  are  now  acquainted. 
Swedenborg,  however,  with  his  doctrine  of  correspondences, 
carried  such  analogism  to  the  utmost  limit,  by  imagining  that 
the  soul  at  death  only  casts  off  the  body  as  an  outer  rind  or 
chrysalis,  and  immediately  emerges  into  a  spiritual  world  so 
like  that  which  she  has  left,  that  she  will  be  ashamed  of  her 
previous  ignorance,  and  soon  be  able  to  find  a  congenial 
heaven  or  hell,  which  shall  only  reflect,  with  new  combina- 
tions, such  scenery  and  employments  as  are  already  known 
and  familiar.  To  all  these  proofs  has  lately  been  added  a 
novel  class,  derived  from  modern  metaphysical  and  physical 
speculations.  The  theistic  disciples  of  Hegel;  such  as  Gosch- 
el,  Weisse,  and  Fichte,  have  argued  for  the  survival  of  the  in- 
dividual soul  from  its  own  indestructible  rational  essence, 
and  from  its  participation  in  the  development  of  the  Absolute 
Reason.  And  some  recent  scientists,  such  as  Rudolf  Wag- 
ner, and  Figuier,  in  his  "Future  Life  according  to  Science" 
have  sought  to  connect  the  spiritual  substance  with  the  uni- 
versal ether  which  pervades  all  gross  matter,  surrounding  the 


CHAP.  iii.J  Scientific  Psychology.  195 

earth  with  a  stratum  of  etherial  souls  (the  latest  products  of 
the  terrestrial  development)  and  concentrated  in  the  sun  as  a 
mass  of  pure  spirits,  whose  rays  kindle  all  the  germs  of  vege- 
table and  animal  life  upon  the  planets. 

According  to  the  mortalists,  however,  the  soul  is  essen- 
tially mortal.  And  the  opinion,  though  not  as  prevalent  as 
its  opposite,  has  scarcely  ever  been  without  advocates.  It 
had  been  held  by  Epicurus  that  the  soul,  being  material,  is 
resolved  at  death  into  its  constituent  atoms,  and  by  Aristotle 
that  through  its  implication  with  the  body  it  becomes  perisha- 
ble; and  some  of  the  earlier  fathers,  Justin,  Arnobius,  and 
Lactantius,  had  taught  that  its  immortality  could  not  be 
proved  by  the  Platonic  arguments,  but  is  only  secured  by 
divine  grace.  During  the  middle  ages  the  controversy  con- 
cerning it  between  the  Thomists  and  Scotists  turned  upon  the 
question  whether  it  is  a  truth  of  revelation  alone  or  also  of 
reason.  At  the  revival  of  letters  in  Italy,  the  two  Aristotelian 
schools,  the  Averroists  and  the  Alexandrists,  agreed  in  deny- 
ing individual  immortality  ;  the  former  maintaining  that  the 
universal  mind  of  the  race  alone  is  immortal,  and  the  latter 
identifying  that  mind  with  the  divine  mind  or  soul  of  the 
world.  Pomponatius,  the  chief  of  the  latter  school,  brought 
the  controversy  to  a  crisis  with  a  treatise  on  the  Immortality 
of  the  Soul,  in  which  he  argued  that  the  particular  intellect 
only  reflects  the  universal  in  time  and  space,  and  under  sensi- 
ble images;  that  it  must  perish  with  the  bodily  organs  through 
which  it  is  exercised;  and  that  true  virtue  is  practiced  without 
regard  to  an  imaginary  future  self-interest.  But  after  both 
Catholics  and  Protestants  authoritatively  defined  the  doctrine, 
such  speculations  disappeared,  and  only  by  degrees  have 
returned  in  more  or  less  scientific  forms. 

The  first  of  these  views  was  known  as  psychopannychism, 
or  the  total  sleep  of  the  soul.  Christian  sects  in  Germany  and 
England,  probably  recoiling  from  the  doctrine  of  purgatory, 
revived  in  a  popular  form  the  ancient  opinion  based  upon  the 
scriptural  and  classical  analogy  between  death  and  sleep,  that 
while  the  body  rests  in  the  grave  the  soul  remains  uncon- 
scious until  awaked  by  the  trump  of  the  resurrection.  Certain 
divines   also,   Heyn,   Wettstein,  and  Reinhard,  seem  to  have 


196  TJie  Schism  in  Psychology.  [part  i. 

held  that  the  shock  of  dissolution  produces  unconsciousness, 
or  leaves  the  soul  in  a  state  of  depressed  activity,  like  the 
languor  of  repose  or  a  dreamless  slumber.  Priestly  endea- 
vored still  more  philosophically  to  identify  the  resurrection 
of  the  body  as  an  awakening  of  the  material  soul  from  death, 
as  his  chosen  epitaph  still  indicates.  The  materialists  of  the 
French  revolution  at  length  precipitated  the  logical  conse- 
quences of  the  theory  by  proclaiming  in  their  very  cemeteries 
that  death  is  an  eternal  sleep.  And  the  most  varied  religious 
applications  of  it,  as  we  shall  see,  have  been  made  by  different 
writers,  such  as  Socinus,  Bonnet,  Olshausen,  and  Whately. 
A  more  pronounced  form  of  mortalism  was  that  of  the  soul's 
dissolution  as  a  consequence  of  its  materiality.  Henry  Tay- 
lor, in  his  "  Search  after  Souls,"  and  in  various  controver- 
sial essays  against  Bentley,  Manlove,  and  Broughton,  main- 
tained the  inseparable  and  extinguishable  nature  of  the  soul 
with  materialistic  arguments.  Dr.  William  Coward  entered 
the  controversy  with  his  "  Second  Thoughts  concerning  the 
Human  Soul,"  designed  to  prove  from  its  perishable  substance 
that  it  must  disappear  with  the  body,  and  can  only  be  immor- 
talized by  divine  power.  Anthony  Collins  subsequently  took 
the  same  position,  in  his  discussion  with  Samuel  Clarke,  as  a 
philosophical  tenet  to  be  maintained  on  purely  psychological 
grounds.  And  after  such  divines  as  Dodwell,  Bold  and  Perro- 
net  had  associated  it  with  the  most  peculiar  dogmas  of  the 
Church,  it  was  driven  to  the  very  opposite  extreme  as  a  doc- 
trine of  eternal  death,  by  such  materialists  as.  La  Mettrie  and 
D'Holbach.  But  the  modern  form  of  mortalism  has  been 
that  of  the  soul's  re-absorption  in  nature  as  a  lost  individu- 
ality or  expended  force.  The  pantheistic  idealists,  such  as 
Blasche,  Michelet,  Rosencranz,  hold  to  an  immortality  so- 
called,  which  is  but  a  virtual  extinction  of  human  personality, 
by  the  supposed  return  at  death  of  the  finite  ego  or  conscious- 
ness, into  the  infinite  ego  or  consciousness ;  in  other  words, 
the  annihilation  of  man  in  God.  Dr.  Alger,  in  his  "  Doctrine 
of  the  Future  Life,"  examines  the  views  of  Drossbach  and 
Widenmann,  who  maintain,  that  the  human  monad  or  indi- 
vidual soul  ever  survives  and  endures  through  death  and  all 
Other  changes,  but  with  a  loss  of  consciousness  or  of  memory. 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Psychology. 


197 


And  the  later  German  materialists,  such  as  Feuerbach,  Moles- 
chott  and  Biichner,  supposing  that  personality  itself  is  but  the 
product  of  organized  atoms  or  forces,  have  reached  the  ex- 
treme of  declaring  that  consciousness,  mind  and  will,  all  are 
dissolved  with  those  atoms  and  forces  and  forever  lost  in  the 
circling  powers  of  nature. 

And  now  we  seem  entering  the  last  separative  stage,  in 
which  the  whole  biblical  psychology  is  to  be  set  aside  as  of 
no  scientific  authority  or  philosophical  value.  The  forerun- 
ners of  the  science,  like  Descartes  and  Hartley,  strove  to  find 
a  Scriptural  warrant  for  their  spiritualistic  or  materialistic 
speculations,  and  some  of  the  recent  leaders  of  the  science, 
like  Carpenter  and  Lotze,  do  not  deny  the  province  of  revela- 
tion in  regard  ta  many  psychological  questions.  But  a  school 
is  now  emerging,  composed  partly  of  professed  psychologists, 
but  mainly  of  amateur  recruits  from  other  sciences,  who  either 
ignore  the  whole  Scripture  doctrine  of  the  soul  or  would  erect 
their  own  crude  hypotheses  in  its  stead.  Professor  Bain  of 
Aberdeen  has  written  elaborate  volumes  on  "  The  Senses,  the 
Emotions  and  the  Will,"  in  which  he  has  perfectly  succeeded 
in  excluding  all  direct  allusions  of  a  biblical  or  even  religious 
nature.  Dr.  Maudsley,  who  can  quote  Scripture  for  a  pur- 
pose, in  his  acute  treatises,  refers  the  origin  of  mind  or  mental 
force  to  the  inscrutable  Power  which  impels  evolution  through- 
out nature,  and  admits  a  miraculous  revelation  from  that 
Power  to  be  conceivable,  but  evidently  does  not  look  for  any 
light  from  such  a  quarter,  upon  the  otherwise  insoluble  prob- 
lems of  psychology.  Dr.  Bence  Jones,  in  his  "Croonian  Lec- 
tures on  Matter  and  Force,"  has  explicitly  affirmed  that  the 
Biblical  account  of  the  constitution  of  man  is  not  to  be  allowed 
any  scientific  authority  whatever.  Professor  Tyndall,  in  his 
famous  Belfast  address,  would  seem  inclined  to  make  Bishop 
Butler  as  non-committal  as  himself  in  regard  to  the  whole 
nature,  origin  and  destiny  of  the  soul,  but  the  chapter  cited  is 
a  masterly  argument  for  our  immortality,  from  spiritualistic  as 
well  as  materialistic  premises,  and  the  rest  of  the  treatise  is  a 
hitherto  unanswered  course  of  strictly  scientific  reasoning  in 
favor  of  divine  revelation  as  a  supernatural  source  of  know- 
ledge in  regions  not  naturally  discoverable  by  reason  and  ex- 


198  TJie  Schism  in  PsycJiology.  [part  i. 

perience.  Professor  Huxley  also,  in  several  scientific  papers, 
has  exhibited  the  automatism  of  Descartes,  aside  from  his 
Scriptural  spiritualism,  and  the  determinism  of  Edwards, 
apart  from  his  Biblical  theism,  and  consistently  with  his  own 
scientific  creed,  has  protested  that  if  some  great  Power  would 
agree  to  make  him  always  think  what  is  true  and  do  what  is 
right,  on  condition  of  being  turned  into  a  sort  of  clock  and 
wound  up  every  mprning  before  he  got  out  of  bed,  he  would 
instantly  close  with  the  offer.  And  John  Stuart  Mill  may 
be  said  to  have  pushed  such  schismatic  psychology  into  the 
practical  sphere  when,  in  his  treatise  on  "  Liberty,"  he  ranked 
the  Meditations  of  Antoninus  with  the  Beatitudes  of  Christ, 
and  declared  his  belief  that  other  ethics  than  any  which  can 
be  evolved  from  distinctively  Christian  sources,  must  exist 
side  by  side  with  the  Christian  ethics,  to  produce  the  moral 
regeneration  of  mankind. 

On  the  revealed  side  of  the  same  science,  however,  may  be 
traced  like  stages  of  divergence  from  the  rational  theory  of 
the  soul.  In  the  first  stage  there  was  a  speedy  disappearance 
of  the  false  scientific  psychology  of  the  mediaeval  schools.  It 
was  the  time  when  the  cumbrous  logic  and  metaphysics,  which 
had  become  entangled  with  the  whole  system  of  divinity,  were 
falling  under  the  blows  of  the  Reformation,  and  the  great  di- 
vines of  the  age,  with  rare  acuteness,  were  exploring  anew  the 
psychological  foundations  of  all  the  peculiar  doctrines  of 
grace.  Luther,  in  his  usual  vehement  tone,  denounced  Aris- 
totle as  that  actor  who,  with  his  Greek  mask,  had  been  so 
long  playing  on  the  stage  of  the  Church,  and  declared  it  his 
greatest  cross  to  be  forced  to  see  fine  minds,  intended  for  all 
good  studies,  spending  their  lives  in  such  pursuits.  Melanc- 
thon,  though  he  retained  somewhat  of  the  system  of  Aristotle, 
carefully  subordinated  it  to  revelation,  and  wrote  a  "  Treatise 
on  the  Soul,"  expressly  designed  to  free  the  science  from 
scholastic  conceits.  Turrettin,  in  his  Institutes,  studiously  dis- 
tinguished the  question  of  free-will  as  it  should  be  discussed 
in  Christian  schools,  without  the  conceits  of  the  Greek  and 
Latin  fathers.  At  the  same  time,  other  theologians,  of  more 
scientific  tastes,  were  seeking  to  conserve  all  that  was  still  true 
in  the  old  psychology,  together  with  the  new.     Father  Gassen- 


CHAP.  III.]  Biblical  Psychology.  199 

di  led  the  way  for  Priestly  in  speculations,  which  may  yet  ap- 
pear as  the  crude  beginnings  of  a  sound  Christian  materialism. 
Father  Malebranche  agreed  with  Berkeley  in  maintaining  that 
true  spiritualism  which  underlies  the  whole  biblical  psycholo- 
gy. Bishop  Butler,  in  his  Sermons  on  Human  Nature  and 
Dissertation  on  Virtue,  not  only  pressed  the  etliics  of  Shaftes- 
bury into  the  service  of  religion,  but  laid  the  ample  founda- 
tions of  man's  responsibility,  with  equal  firmness,  in  the  theo- 
ries of  prudence,  of  benevolence  and  of  rectitude.  At  length 
Jonathan  Edwards,  by  his  masterly  treatise  on  the  Freedom 
of  the  Will,  cleared  away  the  rubbish  of  all  former  specula- 
tions upon  that  long-vexed  question,  and  revealed  a  scientific 
basis  for  the  most  trying  paradoxes  of  the  Christian  Faith_ 
And  since  then  many  other  thoughtful  divines,  such  as  Reid, 
Stewart  and  Chalmers,  Tappan,  Whedon  and  Hodge,  and 
Wuttke,  Delitzsch  and  Ulrici,  have  been  vigorously  re-con- 
structing the  whole  Scripture  doctrine  of  the  soul  in  its  true 
relations  to  the  body. 

All  this  time,  however,  the  great  mass  of  modern  theolo- 
gians have  adhered  to  the  traditional  dogmas  concerning  the 
creation,  regeneration  and  glorification  of  the  human  spirit, 
with  little  or  no  care  for  any  scientific  inquiries  into  its  origin, 
conduct  and  destiny.  As  to  the  first  of  these  dogmas,  it  was 
still  generally  maintained  that  the  soul,  as  a  separate  sub- 
stance, is  not  generated  by  the  parents,  but  immediately 
created  by  God.  Justin  Martyr  and  Origen  had,  indeed,  fa- 
vored a  Platonic  view  of  the  pre-existence  of  the  soul,  re- 
ferring its  miseries  in  the  present  body  to  its  sins  in  a  former 
state ;  and  Tertullian  and  Gregory  of  Nyssa  had  gone  to  the 
other  extreme  of  traducianism,  or  the  notion  of  a  physical  pro- 
pagation of  the  soul  from  parent  to  child,  as  more  consistent 
with  the  doctrine  of  original  depravit^^  But  at  length  through- 
out both  the  Greek  and  Latin  Churches  traducianism  had 
been  supplanted  by  creationism,  as  the  only  orthodox  opinion. 
Lactantius,  borrowing  the  sentiment  from  Lucretius,  that  we 
are  all  the  celestial  offspring  of  the  same  Father,  declared  that 
only  mortals  could  be  generated  by  mortals,  and  cited  against 
traducianism  the  intellectual  prodigies  born  of  stupid  parents. 
St.  Jerome  went  so  far  as  to  describe  the  birth  of  any  human 


200  TJie  Schism  in  Psychology.  [part  i, 

being  as  an  incarnation,  wanting  only  the  special  miracles  of 
the  nativity  of  Christ.  Augustine,  while  refraining  from  specu- 
lations upon  the  origin  of  the  soul,  maintained  its  distinct 
creation  in  Adam,  if  not  in  each  of  his  descendants.  The 
scholastic  divines,  still  more  precisely,  defined  creationism 
against  traducianism.  Thomas  Aquinas,  though  granting  that 
the  so-called  sensitive  soul  might  be  physically  derived  in  the 
likeness  of  the  parent,  maintained  that  the  intellectual  or 
rational  soul  could  only  be  created  directly  in  the  image  of 
God.  Hugh  of  St.  Victor  declared  it  to  be  the  Catholic  faith 
that  the  souls  associated  with  living  bodies  had  been  made  of 
nothing,  rather  than  propagated  in  a  carnal  manner.  And 
Peter  Lombard  unequivocally  maintained  that  all  souls  since 
Adam  were  created  in  the  body  by  direct  infusion  of  God. 
At  the  Reformation  the  Lutheran  divines  reverted  to  traduci- 
anism, while  the  Reformed  theologians,  with  the  Roman  doc- 
tors, re-affirmed  creationism.  Luther,  Gerhard  and  Hollazius 
held  that  the  souls  of  those  descended  from  Adam  and  Eve 
had  neither  been  created  nor  generated,  but  propagated  with  a 
moral  taint  of  original  sin.  But  Calvin,  Beza  and  Turrettin, 
as  creationists,  maintained  that  there  could  have  been  no  moral 
contagion  in  mere  flesh  or  in  mere  spirit,  the  guilt  of  Adam 
having  been  imputed  to  his  posterity  by  just  ordinance  of 
God.  At  the  same  time,  both  classes  were  inclined  to  treat 
the  mode  of  the  production  of  the  soul,  whether  by  creation 
or  by  propagation,  as  an  inscrutable  mystery,  upon  which  the 
existing  psychology  and  physiology  had  not  yet  begun  to 
shed  any  light. 

As  to  the  dogma  of  regeneration,  it  was  still  generally  held 
that  the  soul  is  born  again  and  renewed  by  a  supernatural  act 
of  the  Holy  Spirit.  The  early  Church  Fathers  had,  indeed, 
sometimes  understood  by  regeneration  the  mere  baptism  of  a 
proselyte  from  the  Jewish  or  Pagan  faith,  and  always  strictly 
insisted  upon  the  freedom  of  the  will,  even  in  the  moral  reno- 
vation which  the  term  now  implies.  St.  Clement,  not  only  at- 
tached a  mysterious  grace  to  baptism,  but  declared  that  for 
man  to  strive  for  holiness  beyond  his  own  power,  would  be  as 
absurd  as  to  expect  a  horse  to  plough  or  an  ox  to  serve  for 
riding.     Origen,  though  he  saw  a  more  symbolical  meaning  in 


CHAP.  III.]  Biblical  Psychology.  201 

baptism,  held  to  no  such  regeneration  as  would  obliterate  the 
free-will  and  make  God  the  judge  of  natural  faculties  rather 
than  of  voluntary  actions.  TertuUian,  too,  attributed  the  most 
extraordinary  virtues  to  the  baptismal  water,  as  both  a  natural 
and  Scriptural  emblem,  while  he  denounced  any  doctrine  of 
moral  inability  which  would  leave  man,  the  destined  lord  of 
creation,  such  a  slave  that  he  could  not  reign  over  himself 
But  after  these  opinions  had  been  pushed  to  their  logical  ex- 
treme by  Gregory  and  by  Pelagius,  the  orthodox  faith  was 
defined  by  Augustine,  who  taught  that  the  regenerative  grace 
communicated  in  baptism  effaces  the  stain  of  original  sin,  lib- 
erates the  enslaved  will  and  quickens  into  new  life  all  the 
powers  of  the  soul.  The  scholastics  then  refined  upon  the 
doctrine  with  endless  subtlety.  St.  Thomas  Aquinas  and  Peter 
Lombard  held  not  only  that  the  baptismal  grace  regenerates 
the  soul  in  both  infants  and  adults,  but  also  that  it  secures  the 
pardon  of  past  sins,  with  power  thereafter  to  perform  virtuous 
actions.  The  mystics,  Bonaventura  and  Tauler,  glowingly 
depicted  the  new  life  of  the  regenerate  soul,  through  its  de- 
grees of  purification,  enlightenment,  perfection  and  final  ab- 
sorption in  Deity.  And  gradually,  as  the  practical  fruit  of  such 
opinions,  there  grew  up  the  notion  of  supererogatory  works 
of  merit,  the  sale  of  indulgences  and  other  abuses  which  led 
to  the  Reformation.  But  since  that  time,  the  mass  of  Pro- 
testant authorities,  with  the  exception  of  Anglican  divines,  have 
distinguished  regeneration  from  baptism  and  re-defined  it  as  a 
spiritual,  though  supernatural  renovation,  having  no  invaria- 
ble connection  with  that  sacrament.  The  early  Lutheran  and 
Calvinistic  theologians,  indeed,  seem  to  have  made  it  almost 
synonymous  with  conversion,  and  included  in  it  even  the  ex- 
ternal divine  acts  of  the  justification,  adoption  and  sanctifica- 
tion  of  the  soul,  together  with  their  effects,  as  expressed  in 
faith,  repentance  and  good  works ;  in  a  word,  the  whole  pro- 
cess of  restoring  the  divine  image  in  man.  Later  divines, 
however,  became  more  discrimi-nating  and  precise.  The  Lu- 
theran symbols  described  regeneration  as  a  renewal  of  heart, 
mind  and  will,  in  which  the  soul  is  as  passively  subject  to  the 
operation  of  the  Holy  Spirit  as  a  dead  man  before  he  is  quick- 
ened into  life,  though  it  may  afterwards  co-operate  with  that 


202  Tlic  Schism  in  Psychology.  [part  i. 

Divine  agent  in  all  gracious  works.  The  Westminster  Stan- 
dards still  more  explicitly  taught  that  the  mind  is  enlightened, 
the  will  determined  and  the  whole  heart  changed,  not  by  mere 
moral  suasion,  as  through  the  influence  of  truth,  but  by  Al- 
mighty power  or  irresistible  grace.  At  the  same  time,  ortho- 
dox divines  were  agreed  that  this  new-birth  changes  neither 
the  substance  nor  the  faculties  of  the  soul,  but  is  simply  to  be 
treated  as  an  inscrutable  mystery,  which  no  psychological 
science  could  gainsay  or  explain. 

As  to  the  dogma  of  the  resurrection,  it  was  universally  held 
that  the  perfected  soul,  after  the  separate  state,  will  be  re- 
united to  its  glorified  body.  The  Church  fathers  had  taught 
a  literal  resurrection  of  the  same  flesh.  Origen,  Basil  and 
Gregory  of  Nazianzum  had,  indeed,  explained  the  immortality 
of  the  disembodied  soul  and  magnified  the  difference  between 
the  body  celestial  and  the  body  terrestrial,  likening  the  latter 
to  the  goat-skins  with  which  our  first  parents  clad  themselves 
after  their  fall.  But  Justin  Martyr  argued  that  the  same  cor- 
poreal members,  including  the  most  carnal,  having  been  made 
instruments  of  sin  or  of  righteousness,  must  participate  in  the 
future  rewards  and  punishments,  and  that  even  cripples  could 
only  be  miraculously  restored  in  the  resurrection,  like  the  man 
with  the  withered  hand  in  the  Gospel.  Tertullian  so  far  iden- 
tified the  body  with  the  soul  as  an  essential  part  of  the  divine 
image,  that  he  anticipated  for  its  several  organs  higher  spirit- 
ual uses,  as  the  mouth  now  serves  not  only  for  eating,  but  for 
praising  God.  St.  Jerome  still  more  grossly  described  the  re- 
surrection body  as  composed  of  blood,  tissues,  bones,  all  the 
present  organs,  even  the  teeth,  which  the  condemned  shall 
gnash,  and  the  very  hairs,  which  are  all  numbered.  At  length 
Augustine  defined  the  doctrine  against  both  extremes  of  the 
Greek  and  Latin  fathers  by  consigning  the  soul  to  a  separate 
state  of  purification,  termed  purgatory,  and  reserving  for  it  a 
future  body,  substantially  like  the  present,  but  free  from  its 
defects,  impurities  and  distinctions  of  age,  sex  and  stature. 
The  scholastic  doctors  proceeded  to  indulge  in  the  most  fan- 
tastic speculations  upon  these  opinions.  Thomas  Aquinas 
taught  that  wicked  souls  in  purgatoiy  suffered  from  literal 
fire,  while  the  righteous  passed  immediately  into  beatific  rest 


CHAP.  III.]  Biblical  Psychology.  203 

until  they  should  receive  new  bodies,  derived  only  from  the 
substance  possessed  at  death,  in  the  prime  of  their  vigor,  with 
refined  senses  and  organs,  swift  in  movement  and  glorious  in 
aspect,  but  invisible  to  mortal  eyes.  Peter  Lombard,  though 
refraining  from  such  subtleties,  distinctly  enunciated  the  dogma 
that  the  prayers  and  alms  of  the  faithful  avail  for  the  release 
of  souls  from  purgatory,  and  even  that  in  this  matter  the  rich 
have  advantages  over  the  poor.  Gregory  the  Great,  upon 
this  doctrinal  basis,  at  length  organized  the  tremendous  sys- 
tem of  masses  and  penances,  by  which  the  Church  enforced 
its  claim  to  hold  the  keys  of  heaven  and  hell.  The  most 
saintly  mystics,  such  as  Bonaventura  and  Hugh  St.  Victor, 
brooded  in  devout  reverie  over  the  raptures  of  paradise  and 
the  torments  of  purgatory ;  the  great  poets  and  artists,  such 
as  Dante  and  Michael  Angelo,  depicted  them  in  vivid  imagery  j 
and  all  Christendom  trembled  in  view  of  them,  as  ever  on  the 
brink  of  unspeakable  bliss  or  woe.  With  the  downfall  of 
these  superstitions  came  the  Protestant  attempts  to  reconstruct 
the  true  doctrine  of  immortality  and  the  resurrection.  The 
Lutheran  formulas  did  not  at  first  distinguish  between  the 
happiness  of  the  soul  in  the  separate  state,  and  the  more  com- 
plete happiness  it  attains  through  the  resurrection  of  the  body, 
but  simply  taught  that  at  the  coming  of  Christ  in  judgment, 
all  the  dead  shall  be  revived,  the  pious  elect  receiving  eternal 
life  and  joy,  while  impious  men  and  devils  are  condemned  to 
everlasting  torment.  The  Church  of  England,  in  her  beauti- 
ful liturgy,  speaks  of  the  departed  spirits  of  the  just  as  deliv- 
ered from  their  earthly  prisons,  freed  from  the  burden  of  the 
flesh,  and  ever  dwelling  with  God  in  perpetual  joy  and  felicity, 
until  in  the  general  resurrection  they  shall  receive  again  their 
bodies,  made  pure  and  incorruptible.  Jeremy  Taylor  and  some 
later  divines  described  the  intermediate  state  as  a  Paradise, 
distinct  from  the  heaven  of  the  blessed,  and  a  receptacle 
of  holy  souls,  made  illustrious  with  the  visitation  of  angels. 
The  Westminster  standards,  more  dogmatically  but  not  less 
poetically,  declared  that  the  souls  of  believers  are,  at  their 
death,  made  perfect  in  holiness  and  do  immediately  pass  into 
glory,  while  their  bodies,  being  still  united  to  Christ,  do  rest 
in  their  graves  until  the  resurrection.     But  all  orthodox  di- 


204  '^^''^  Schism  in  Psychology.  [part  i. 

vines  alike  refrained  from  precise  definitions  of  the  resurrec- 
tion body,  more  especially  as  the  existing  physiology  had 
shown  no  power  of  elucidating  such  future  mysteries. 

But  now,  in  the  third  separative  stage,  we  behold  a  biblical 
psychology,  which  seeks  to  detach  itself  wholly  from  all  the 
discoveries  and  theories  of  mental  science  and  repudiate  them 
as  of  no  doctrinal  interest  or  didactic  value.  Many  intelligent 
divines,  it  is  true,  cannot  but  perceive  its  preliminary  and  fun- 
damental importance.  The  most  representative  divine  of  the 
age.  Dr.  Hodge,,  in  the  anthropological  part  of  his  Systematic 
Theology,  distinctly  admits  that  every  theologian  must  include 
in  his  system  some  theory  of  the  will,  as  predetermining  his 
theology  and  measurably  his  religion;  and  he  has  himself  en- 
deavored to  converge  all  the  light  of  modern  psychology  and 
physiology  upon  the  dogmas  of  regeneration  and  resurrection. 
Others,  however,  would  seem  to  have  tacitly  assumed  the 
psychological  theories,  traditionally  involved  in  their  creed  or 
Church  confession,  as  being  of  Scriptural  origin,  though  not 
revealed  with  metaphysical  exactness,  very  much  as  the  Co- 
pernican  astronomy  was  once  identified  with  orthodoxy,  and 
consequently  ignore  any  more  recent  results  of  mental  science 
inconsistent  with  them.  But  still  others,  who  accept  such  re- 
sults, make  no  use  of  them  in  defending  and  illustrating  the 
true  psychology  of  the  Scriptures.  Though  St.  Paul  referred 
depravity  to  the  perverted  action  of  mental  laws  and  described 
the  resurrection  as  a  natural  metamorphosis,  and  though  the 
Scriptures  everywhere,  by  precept  and  example,  enforce  all 
the  humane  virtues,  as  well  as  godly  graces,  which  should 
have  place  in  the  true  Christian  ethics,  yet  they  treat  the 
various  mental  and  moral  sciences  as  mere  branches  of 
secular  or  profane  learning;  and  at  a  time  when  the  non- 
Christian  votaries  of  these  sciences  are  quoting  Scripture  as 
often  as  it  can  serve  their  own  purpose  and  masquerading  in 
the  very  garb  of  orthodoxy,  they  continue  to  represent  the 
peculiar  doctrines  of  grace  as  but  so  many  abnormal  miracles 
or  anomalous  mysteries,  intended  for  the  trial  of  our  faith. 

And  thus  psychology,  the  science  of  the  noblest  part  of  our 
nature,  if  it  is  to  be  torn  asunder  by  the  indifferent  spirit,  in- 
stead of  transfiguring  both  body  and  soul,  would  but  blend 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Sociology.  205 

the  crass  materialism  of  Tertuliian  with  the  ascetic  spiritual- 
ism of  Pascal,  or  abandon  us  to  the  morals  of  Seneca  and  the 
fate  of  Lucretius. 

The  Schism  in  Sociology. 

In  sociology,  also,  the  two  antagonists  have  been  fast  verg- 
ing into  a  sort  of  permanent  armistice. 

On  the  rational  side  of  the  science  may  be  traced  the  three 
stages  of  departure  from  the  revealed  doctrine  of  society.  In 
the  first  and  legitimate  stage  occurred  the  great  political  re- 
volt from  a  false  theocracy,  from  the  pretended  Vicar  of  Christ 
at  Rome.  It  was  the  critical  epoch  when  the  State  was  as- 
serting its  independence  of  the  Church,  and  everywhere  far- 
seeing  patriots  and  philanthropists  were  opening  the  paths  of 
freedom  and  progress.  As  early  as  the  twelfth  century,  Ar- 
nold of  Brescia,  the  pupil  of  Abelard  and  proto-martyr  of  civil 
liberty,  had  perished  in  the  vain  attempt  to  create  at  the  capi- 
tol  of  Christendom  an  ideal  republic,  which  should  sequestrate 
the  wealth  of  the  Church  for  the  good  of  the  people.  Sir 
Thomas  More,  three  centuries  afterward,  an  advocate  of  toler- 
ance, liberty  and  equality,  while  despotism  still  reigned 
throughout  Europe,  had  dreamed  of  his  "Utopia,"  the  first  of 
those  new  Platonic  commonwealths  which  sanguine  spirits, 
like  Campanella  and  Harrington,  have  ever  since  been  pro- 
jecting as  the  brilliant  goal  of  the  social  development.  John 
Bodin,  whose  "Republic"  was  a  marvel  of  his  age,  had  traversed 
nearly  the  whole  range  of  political  science,  and  even  antici- 
pated Montesquieu  in  connecting  civil  history  with  geography 
by  referring  national  character  and  institutions  to  the  influence 
of  race  and  climate.  Montesquieu  himself,  in  his  great  work 
"The  Spirit  of  Laws,"  for  the  first  time  traced  the  rationale  of 
all  governments,  institutions  and  customs  with  that  nice  his- 
torical dissection  which  was  afterwards  so  happily  described 
by  Guizot  and  De  Tocqueville  as  a  species  of  political  anato- 
my. Victoria,  Ayala  and  Gentilis,  as  professors  of  ecclesiastical, 
military  and  civil  law,  had  collected  those  precedents  and 
problems  of  public  ethics  which  were  yet  to  be  more  philo- 
sophically treated.  Hugo  Grotius  of  Holland,  the  founder  of 
international  jurisprudence,  in  his  renowned  treatise  "On  the 


2o6  The  Scliism  in  Sociology.  [part  i. 

Rights  of  Peace  and  War,"  then  proceeded  to  lay  the  founda- 
tions of  universal  justice  in  reason  and  experience  by  citing 
the  opinions  of  philosophers,  historians,  poets,  orators,  to- 
gether with  prophets  and  apostles,  as  in  a  grand  Amphyctionic 
council  of  nations.  John  Baptiste  Vico  of  Florence,  the  father 
of  the  philosophy  of  history,  as  a  disciple  of  Bacon  and  Gro- 
tius,  announcing  his  "  New  Science  of  a  Common  Nature  of 
Nations,"  exhibited  for  the  first  time,  by  an  historical  induc- 
tion, the  career  of  States  as  proceeding  under  periodic  laws. 
Robert  James  Turgot,  who  began  as  prior  of  the  Sorbonne 
and  ended  as  minister  of  state  at  the  summit  of  the  Revolu- 
tion, in  his  discourse  on  "The  Successive  Advances  of  the 
Human  Mind,"  enriched  historical  science  with  those  addi- 
tional ideas  of  social  progression  and  perfectibility,  which 
were  afterwards  matured  by  Condorcet,  Dove  and  Comte. 
Adam  Smith,  the  father  of  political  economy,  gave  the  first 
check  to  legislative  interference  with  the  laws  of  trade,  by 
drawing  attention  to  labor  as  the  source  of  opulence,  and  the 
power  of  capital  in  developing  industry,  while  St.  Simon  and 
Fourier  broached  the  first  crude  notion  of  a  self-adjusting 
harmonism  of  social  interests  and  passions.  Gotthold  Ephraim 
Lessing,  ascending  above  the  physical  and  intellectual  into 
the  religious  sphere,  by  his  suggestive  treatise  on  "  The  Edu- 
cation of  the  Human  Race,"  raised  the  high  problem  of  the 
relation  of  revelation  to  social  progress  and  culture,  which  the 
genius  of  Schlegel  and  Buchez  has  not  yet  solved.  Mean- 
while, too,  were  rising  in  England,  France  and  Germany  those 
schools  of  civil  historiography,  founded  by  Gibbon,  De  Thou 
and  Schlozer,  which  have  since  been  adorned  by  Hallam  and 
Grote,  Guizot  and  Thierry,  Niebuhr  and  Mommsen,  and 
which,  though  more  erudite  and  literary  than  philosophical^ 
were  destined  to  serve  as  the  museums  or  collections  of  mate- 
rials for  the  students  of  a  stricter  historical  and  social  science. 
At  length  Herder,  the  father  of  universal  history,  with  rare 
catholic  genius,  combining  all  human  interests,  art,  science, 
politics,  religion,  in  his  magnificent  fragment,  "  Ideas  toward 
a  Philosophy  of  the  History  of  Mankind,"  essayed  to  trace  the 
entire  development  of  the  race,  from  its  origin  to  its  destiny, 
as  one  necessary  march  of  law  and  reason.     And  ever  since 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Sociology.  20/ 

then  a  host  of  historians,  statesmen,  economists,  statisticians 
and  philosophers,  the  mention  of  whom  would  crowd  the  page 
with  brilliant  names,  has  been  engaged,  more  or  less  directly, 
upon  the  scientific  study  of  human  society  as  a  complex  or- 
ganism, regulated  by  physical  and  psychical  laws. 

During  all  this  time,  however,  in  the  second  separative 
stage,  arose  various  hypotheses,  more  or  less  scientific,  con- 
cerning the  origin,  the  progress  and  the  destiny  of  civil  so- 
ciety, of  the  State,  treated  as  a  social  institute,  distinct  from 
the  Church.  As  to  the  first  of  these  problems,  the  origin  of 
civil  society,  there  were  the  two  rival  schools  of  legitimists 
and  revolutionists.  According  to  the  former,  civil  govern- 
ment originates  in  divine  right.  It  had  been  the  express 
teaching  of  the  early  fathers,  such  as  Justin,  Polycarp,  Chry- 
sostom,  that  emperors  and  princes  held  their  power  from  God, 
as  His  vicegerents,  and  were  to  be  passively  obeyed  even  when 
exercising  that  power  as  tyrannically  as  a  Nero  or  a  Diocletian, 
in  persecuting  the  Christians.  And  this  dogma,  though  over- 
shadowed by  the  papal  supremacy  during  the  Middle  Ages, 
was  revived  by  various  parties.  Catholic,  Protestant  and  Infi- 
del, amid  the  social  upheavals  of  the  Reformation,  and  re-cast 
into  the  forms  of  a  political  theory.  By  one  party,  from  reli- 
gious rather  than  political  motives,  the  divine  right  of  civil 
rulers  was  derived  mediately  from  the  people  as  a  sacred  trust. 
Cardinal  Bellarmin,  in  his  great  work  on  "  The  Supremacy  of 
the  Sovereign  Pontiff  over  Temporal  Affairs,"  adopting  the 
scholastic  distinctions,  maintained  that  popes  alone  received 
their  authority  directly  from  God,  while  civil  rulers  received 
theirs  indirectly  through  the  consent  of  their  peoples,  who 
were  originally  created  with  a  capacity  for  monarchy,  aristoc- 
racy or  democracy,  according  to  their  circumstances  and  opin- 
ions. Francis  Suarez,  the  Spanish  Jesuit,  published  a  "  De- 
fence of  the  Faith  against  the  Anglican  Sect  and  the  most  se- 
rene king  James,"  in  which  he  also  argued  the  indirect  origin 
of  civil  as  distinguished  from  ecclesiastidal  power,  and  even 
asserted  the  paramount  right  of  the  Roman  Pontiff  to  depose 
and  execute  heretical  princes,  with  the  consequent  right  of 
their  subjects  to  resist  them  by  force.  Father  Mariana,  an- 
other famous  Jesuit,  in  a  work   "  On   the   Regal   Institution," 


2o8  The  Schism  in  Sociology.  [part  i, 

through  his  zeal  for  the  papacy  against  royalty,  astutely  dis- 
tinguished between  a  king  and  a  tyrant,  and  went  so  far  as  to 
justify  tyrannicide  or  political  assassination  as  an  original 
right  of  the  persecuted  citizen.  And  to  the  same  party  be- 
longed those  Protestant  writers  who  accepted  monarchy  or 
aristocracy  as  a  divine  institution,  subordinate  to  the  Church. 

By  another,  bolder  party,  the  divine  right  of  civil  rulers 
was  derived  immediately  from  Heaven  as  a  direct  commis- 
sion. Bossuet,  in  his  "  Defence  of  the  Galilean  Church,"  held 
the  French  sovereign,  in  his  temporal  capacity,  to  be  abso- 
lutely independent  both  of  the  pope  and  of  the  people,  and 
stigmatized  papal  interference  as  usurpation  and  popular  re- 
bellion as  mortal  sin,  oppressed  Christians  being  but  as  sheep 
in  the  power  of  wolves.  King  Louis  XIV.,  claiming  such 
divine  right  as  his  own,  afterwards  but  expressed  the  theory 
of  his  courtiers  in  the  proud  assertion,  "  I  am  the  State." 
James  I.  of  England,  whose  pedantic  "Defence  of  Kings"  was 
aimed  at  Bellarmin  and  provoked  the  reply  of  Suarez,  told  his 
Parliament  that  the  privileges  of  legislatures  were  pure  con- 
cessions from  the  bounty  of  monarchs.  And  with  such  par- 
ties, from  opposite  motives,  agreed  the  French  skeptics  Mon- 
taigne, Charron  and  Bayle,  and  the  English  divines  Taylor, 
Heylin  and  Usher. 

At  length,  by  another  still  more  extreme  party,  the  di- 
vine right  of  kings  was  derived  from  the  family  constitution, 
with  a  religious  consecration.  Bossuet  had  adduced  such  an 
argument  from  the  very  word  "  Abimelech,"  or  father-king,  as 
the  title  common  to  the  Hebrew  monarchs.  The  early  Eng- 
lish reformers  inculcated  submission  to  kings,  as  included  in 
the  decalogue  under  the  command  to  obey  parents,  and  later 
"  Homilies  "  of  the  Church  consigned  political  rebels  to  eter- 
nal perdition  with  Satan,  leader  of  the  first  great  rebellion. 
Sir  Robert  Filmer,  whose  "Patriarcha"  became  the  manual  of 
the  school,  maintained  that  all  government  was  originally 
monarchical,  being  derived  from  the  heads  of  families  by 
primogeniture,  or  by  delegation  on  failure  of  succession,  and 
that  a  mixed  or  limited  monarchy  was  unlawful,  even  un- 
natural, and  could  only  issue  in  anarchy.  The  "Icon  Basilike, 
or  Portraiture  of  his  Sacred  Majesty  in  his  Solitude  and  Suf- 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Sociology.  209 

ferings,"  attributed  to  king  Charles  himself,  and  pathetically 
said  to  have  been  written  not  with  a  pen,  but  a  sceptre,  caused 
that  monarch  to  be  all  but  adored  as  a  royal  martyr,  whose 
death  had  been  an  unnatural  crime,  equivalent  to  parricide. 
Such  extravagant  notions  of  divine  right  may  seem  to  have 
long  since  disappeared  with  the  decline  of  absolute  monarchy; 
but  in  our  own  day  they  have  been  revived  in  an  aristocratic 
and  theocratic  form  by  those  defenders  of  American  slavery 
and  polygamy,  who  have  justified  such  institutions  from  the 
Scriptures,  and  even  in  a  democratic  form  by  zealous  union- 
ists, who  sought  to  define  secession  dogmatically  as  a  sin.  It 
has  thus  ever  been  the  tendency  of  extreme  legitimism  to 
clothe  civil  institutions  with  divine  sanctions  and  preroga- 
tives. 

According  to  the  revolutionists,  however,  civil  society  origi- 
nated in  a  social  contract.  It  had  been  the  opinion  of  ancient 
philosophers,  such  as  Plato,  Cicero,  and  Seneca,  that  the  first 
men  in  a  wild  state  entered  into  government  by  mutual  con- 
sent for  the  common  welfare ;  and  this  speculation,  after 
having  been  long  displaced  by  the  patristic  doctrine  of  passive 
obedience,  was  partially  revived  by  the  schoolmen  and  later 
doctors,  under  Aquinas  and  John  St.  Mary,  in  the  distinction 
between  mediate  and  immediate  divine  right,  and  at  length, 
amid  the  political  revolutions  following  the  Reformation, 
moulded  by  different  classes  of  publicists  into  a  scientific 
hypothesis.  At  the  outset  there  was  a  class,  who  from  political 
rather  than  religious  motives,  assailed  the  figment,  of  imme- 
diate divine  right.  William  Barclay,  a  Scottish  professor  of 
civil  law  in  France,  whose  treatise  on  "  The  Power  of  the 
Pope  in  respect  to  Kings  and  Princes  "  drew  an  answer  from 
Bellarmin,  and  a  defence  from  the  Parliament  of  Paris,  was 
the  first  Catholic  layman  to  resist  that  papal  claim  of  supre- 
macy and  arbitration,  which  convulsed  the  kingdoms  of  Eu- 
rope until  the  peace  of  Westphalia.  George  Buchanan,  jurist, 
poet  and  historian,  as  famous  for  applying  the  birch  to 
his  young  pupil,  king  James,  as  for  his  subsequent  treatise 
against  the  "  Rights  of  Royalty,"  issued  the  slogan  which  was 
echoed  and  re-echoed  through  the  British  Islands,  until  their 
settlement  in  a  constitutional  monarchy  under  William  of 
2B 


210  The  Schism  in  Sociology.  [part  i. 

Nassau.  Milton,  by  order  of  Parliament,  produced  "  Icono- 
clastes,"  or  Image-breaker,  as  an  offset  to  Icon  Basilike,  and 
at  the  same  time  defended  the  people  of  England  against  Sal- 
masius,  the  champion  of  the  royalists  on  the  continent.  Al- 
gernon Sidney,  with  his' ponderous  "  Discourses  on  Govern- 
ment," demolished  the  last  remnants  of  that  patriarchal  theory 
which  for  generations  had  invested  absolute  monarchy  with 
the  charms  of  romance,  as  well  as  the  sanctions  of  nature  and 
of  religion. 

Then  followed  a  class  of  speculative  publicists,  who  instead 
of  the  right  divine,  held  to  an  original  compact  between  ruler 
and  people.  Grotius,  Puffendorf,  Cumberland,  and  numerous 
other  writers,  had  already  referred  political  institutions  and 
laws  to  the  natural  sociableness  of  mankind,  and  Hooker  and 
Selden  had  even  based  the  authority  of  kings  upon  the  con- 
sent of  their  subjects,  though  without  drawing  the  logical 
consequences.  John  Locke,  in  his  celebrated  "  Treatise  on 
Government,"  after  refuting  Filmer  on  rational  as  well  as 
scriptural  grounds,  then  argued  that  all  civil  power  was  origi- 
nally a  pure  concession  of  the  people,  and  enunciated  that 
principle  of  representative  legislation,  which,  though  it  failed 
to  take  root  immediately  in  the  wilds  of  Carolina,  was  des- 
tined to  dissolve  and  restate  political  compacts  throughout 
America  and  Europe.  Jefferson,  Adams,  and  Hamilton,  with 
their  compatriots,  only  formulated  and  applied  such  opinions, 
when  they  declared  it  to  be  self-evident  that  all  men  are  born 
free  and  equal,  and  proceeded  to  dissolve  the  political  bands 
which  connected  them  with  the  English  monarchy,  and  to 
constitute  a  new  government  on  the  basis  of  the  popular  will 
alone. 

But  in  the  end,  there  appeared  a  class  of  revolutionists  as- 
sailing the  divine  right  of  the  family,  of  property,  and  of  the 
whole  social  order.  Machiavelli,  Spinoza,  and  Hobbes  had 
already  represented  all  civil  government  as  having  originated 
in  brute  force,  rather  than  right  and  reason.  Morelli  and 
Mably,  French  political  writers  in  the  eighteenth  century,  had 
included  the  passions  and  instincts  as  legitimate  rights  in  the 
code  of  nature,  insinuated  doubts  upon  the  existing  moral  or- 
der, and  advocated  Spartan  and  agrarian  principles  of  legisla- 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Sociology.  2\\ 

tion.  Rousseau,  the  herald  of  the  revolution,  in  his  "  Social 
Contract,"  among  other  reckless  paradoxes,  ridiculed  all  civil 
power  as  no  more  divine  than  the  pistol  of  the  highwayman, 
and  described  even  representative  government  as  an  abridg- 
ment of  natural  liberty;  indeed  all  civilization  as  but  a  complex 
usurpation  of  the  original  rights  of  man.  Brissot  of  Warville, 
the  incendiary  of  the  reign  of  terror,  applying  the  doctrines 
of  Mably  and  La  Mettrie  in  a  violent  pamphlet,  proclaimed 
to  the  populace  that  marriage  was  mere  slavery,  property  but 
robbery,  and  the  savage  the  only  legitimate  state  of  society. 
And  Mirabeau,  Robespierre,  St.  Just  and  their  accomplices  in 
the  Assembly  simply  precipitated  the  anarchy  in  which  they 
were  themselves  overwhelmed,  when  they  converted  such  doc- 
trines into  decrees  issuing  in  general  pillage,  lust  and  blood- 
shed. In  our  own  times  somewhat  similar  opinions  have 
been  peacefully  revived  in  a  more  scientific  form  by  St.  Simon, 
Fourier  and  Owen,  and  in  a  political  form  by  Cabet,  Louis 
Blanc  and  Proudhon. 

As  to  the  second  problem,  the  growth  or  progress  of  civil 
society,  there  were  also  two  rival  schools,  the  libertarian  and  the 
necessitarian,  or  the  pragmatic  and  the  inductive  historians.  The 
former  would  refer  all  social  events  to  mere  will,  divine  or  human. 
It  had  been  the  habit  of  ecclesiastical  historians,  from  the  days 
of  Eusebius  and  Theodorus,  to  assume  Providence  as  the  chief 
agent  in  history  and  the  Church  as  a  special  factor,  to  which 
all  accompanying  civilization  was  but  tributaiy.  And  the 
early  historiographers,  accepting  this  as  the  only  scientific 
treatment  of  social  phenomena,  simply  exhibited  civil  history, 
in  connection  with  ecclesiastical,  as  in  a  sort  of  divine  drama 
or  plan  of  Providence.  .  Bossuet,  in  his  eloquent  "  Discourse," 
depicted  the  rise  and  fall  of  Egypt,  Assyria,  Media,  Persia, 
Greece  and  Rome  as  dependent  upon  the  salient  epochs  of 
Jewish  history  and  conspiring  to  the  establishment  of  the 
Christian  religion  and  the  Catholic  Church.  Prideaux,  in  like 
manner,  connected  the  History  of  the  Jews  with  that  of  neigh- 
boring nations,  from  the  time  of  the  kings  of  Israel  to  the 
coming  of  Christ,  leaving  Schuckford  and  Russell  to  complete 
the  connection  of  Sacred  with  Profane  History,  during  the 
preceding  periods  from  the  time  of  the  Creation.     And  the 


212  The  Schisjn  in  Sociology.  [part  i. 

same  pragmatic,  though  devout  spirit,  has  often  been  pushed, 
with  questionable  minuteness,  into  more  recent  history ;  as  by 
Schomberg,  whose  "  Theocratic  Philosophy  of  English  Histo- 
ry" is  but  an  attempt  to  explain  the  civil  and  military  events 
of  the  State  as  so  many  special  divine  interpositions  on  behalf 
of  the  Church;  and  by  the  late  Canon  Kingsley,  who  repre- 
sents the  wars  of  the  Teutons  and  Romans  as  managed  by  a 
General  in  Heaven,  with  the  strategy  of  Providence. 

By  degrees,  however,  civil  history  was  detached  from  eccle- 
siastical as  a  purely  human  drama  or  game  of  kings  and 
statesmen.  Dr.  William  Robertson,  principal  of  Edinburgh 
University  and  leader  of  the  moderate  party  in  the  Kirk,  gave 
to  the  world  Histories  of  Scotland,  England  and  America,  so 
secularized  by  romance  and  philosophy,  so  filled  with  ideal 
scenes  and  personages,  that  they  appeared  like  stately  dramas, 
and  as  such  were  in  fact  applauded  by  the  great  of  his  day. 
Hume,  carrying  the  skepticism  of  his  philosophy  with  him, 
wrote  his  partizan  "History  of  England"  with  such  entire 
suppression  of  the  religious  element  that  Alison,  one  of  his 
most  generous  critics,  declared  it  was  like  the  play  of  Hamlet 
without  the  character  of  the  Prince  of  Denmark.  Gibbon, 
with  still  more  ironical  purpose,  in  his  famous  chapters  on  the 
rise  and  spread  of  Christianity,  may  be  said  to  have  completed 
the  secularizing  process  by  laboring  to  reduce  that  great  mira- 
cle of  history  to  a  mere  ordinary  product  of  human  causes 
and  motives.  And  the  same  spirit,  to  an  infidel  extreme,  dis- 
played itself  in  the  historical  writings  of  Voltaire  and  Volney. 

Another  still  stronger  pragmatic  tendency  has  been  that 
of  concentrating  the  significance  of  history  in  great  men  as  the 
conspicuous  figures  in  the  Providential  drama  or  the  prime 
movers  of  civilization.  Cousin,  in  his  brilliant  lectures  on 
history,  whilst  admitting  other  social  factors,  exalts  above 
them  the  series  of  warriors,  statesmen,  poets,  artists,  thinkers, 
as  the  exponents  of  whole  nations  and  epochs,  summing  up 
humanity  as  humanity  itself  sums  up  nature,  and  swaying  the 
world  as  divine  instruments  whose  title  is  success,  whose  re- 
ward is  glory.  Carlyle  has  made  the  same  doctrine  popular 
in  his  "Heroes  and  Hero  worship,"  and  described  the  whole 
English  Commonwealth  as  scarcely  more  than  a  Cromwelliad. 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientifc  Sociology.  213 

Emerson,  in  his  essays  on  "  Representative  Men,"  with  charac- 
teristic egoism,  erects  history  into  a  sort  of  stage  for  the  dis- 
play of  the  Platos,  the  Shaksperes,  the  Napoleons,  who  have 
personified  the  different  phases  and  epochs  of  humanity.  And 
the  biographical  form,  which  so  many  popular  histories  as- 
sume, is  a  standing  proof  of  the  extent  to  which  this  pragmatic 
view  of  social  phenomena  prevails. 

A  more  abstruse  form  of  the  same  tendency,  which  has  ap- 
peared in  our  day,  is  that  of  exhausting  the  import  of  history 
in  certain  great  ideas  or  typical  facts,  and  thus  rendering  it  a 
mere  vehicle  of  philosophy  or  supposed  process  of  logic. 
The  German  idealists  have  proceeded  on  the  principle  that  the 
science  of  history  is  not  to  be  derived  from  history  itself,  but 
only  illustrated  by  it  as  a  theory  of  the  world  in  all  its  possi- 
ble epochs,  which  the  philosopher  has  conceived  independently 
of  experience.  According  to  Fichte,  history  is  but  the  biogra- 
phy of  the  Absolute  Ego  from  the  infancy  to  the  maturity  of 
reason,  through  the  five  great  epochs  of  instinct,  authority,  re- 
flection, science  and  philosophy.  According  to  Schelling,  it 
is  the  self-evolution  of  the  Absolute  Mind,  as  revealed  in  hu- 
manity through  the  three  periods  of  fate,  of  natural  law,  and 
of  Providence.  According  to  Hegel,  who  reduced  history  as 
well  as  nature  to  sheer  logic,  it  is  the  human  development  of 
the  Absolute  Reason,  the  dialectic  of  nations,  the  great  argu- 
ment of  successive  civihzations,  beginning  in  China,  continuing 
in  India,  Egypt  and  Greece,  and  issuing  in  Germany  as  a  com- 
plete triumph  of  art,  religion  and  philosophy.  Cousin,  apply- 
ing the  Hegelian  logic,  found  in  all  history,  as  the  only  possi- 
ble phases  of  civilization,  the  three  ideas  and  epochs  of  the  in- 
finite, the  finite,  and  the  relation  between  them,  with  their  pre- 
determining climates,  the  Asiatic,  the  Mediterranean  and  the 
European.  The  Italian  positivist,  Ferrari,  in  his  "  Essay  on 
the  Limits  of  the  Philosophy  of  History,"  whilst  advocating 
an  ideal  history  to  be  generated  from  actual  history,  denies 
that  actual  history  yields  the  ideal  histories  of  Hegel  and  Cou- 
sin, since  they  would  arbitrarily  ignore  or  modify  whole  na- 
tions, epochs,  and  civilizations,  according  to  logical  pre-con- 
ceptions,  and  thus  exhaust  all  human  development  in  mere 
Hegelianism,  the  conceit  of  a  single  philosopher. 


214  •  T^'-^  Sdiisni  in  Sociology.  [part  i. 

At  length  the  pragmatic  tendency  has  come  to  an  extreme 
in  writers  who  have  declared  a  social  science  impossible,  and 
made  it  the  very  design  of  history  to  emancipate  free  will 
from  fixed  laws.  Professor  Froude,  in  his  essay  on  "The 
Science  of  History,"  has  maintained  that  historical  phe- 
nomena never  repeat  themselves,  that  natural  causes  are  ever 
liable  to  be  set  aside  by  volition,  and  that  consequently  there 
can  be  no  scientific  explanation  of  what  men  have  done 
or  will  do,  and  no  experimental  investigation  of  social  facts. 
Professor  Goldwin  Smith,  in  his  lectures  on  "The  Study  of 
History,"  has  argued  that  the  supposed  social  laws  are  pre- 
cluded by  human  free-will  and  divine  justice,  that  neither  cli- 
mate nor  race  determines  the  destiny  of  nations,  that  the  very 
language  of  the  sociologists  is  mere  delusive  metaphor,  and 
that  there  could  be  no  inductive  theory  or  science  of  history 
until  history  was  itself  finished.  M.  Michelet,  a  disciple  and 
critic  of  Vico,  in  his  little  work  entitled  "Introduction  to  Uni- 
versal History,"  has  described  human  progress  as  a  continu- 
ous battle  of  man  with  nature,  of  liberty  with  fatality,  proceed- 
ing from  the  eastern  to  the  western  nations,  involving  the 
gradual  enfranchisement  of  religion,  of  science,  of  industry, 
and  destined  to  issue  in  the  universal  triumph  of  individual 
freedom  ;  according  to  the  fine  saying  of  Hegel,  "The  ancient 
world  knew  that  one  man  was  free,  the  king;  the  modern 
world  knows  that  some  men  are  free,  certain  classes ;  but  the 
coming  world  will  know  that  all  men  are  free."  To  the  same 
class  Professor  Flint,  in  his  "Philosophy  of  History,"  has  as- 
signed M.  Quinet,  a  disciple  and  critic  of  Herder,  who,  against 
the  fatalism  of  his  master,  has  maintained  that  human  history 
is  not  mere  natural  history,  an  advanced  region  of  physical 
law  and  development,  but  is  to  be  distinguished  as  the  domain 
of  free  will,  and  that  so  far  as  it  has  any  course  or  plan  or 
aim,  it  simply  exhibits  the  ceaseless  struggles  of  the  personal 
reason  against  the  dominion  of  nature  and  the  tyranny  of  so- 
ciety, from  land  to  land  and  from  age  to  age,  in  search  of  the 
goal  of  absolute  freedom.  And  thus  the  pragmatic  spirit  in 
history  would  end  by  exalting  mere  individual  will  over  all 
natural  and  social  law. 

But  the  necessitarian  or  inductive  school  of  civil  historians 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Sociology.  215 

have  sought  to  refer  all  social  events  to  fixed  laws  of  recur- 
rence and  progression.  The  idea  had  very  early  been  broached 
by  Greek  and  Roman  philosophers,  such  as  Ocellus  and  Florus, 
that  nations,  like  individuals,  are  born,  grow  and  die,  to  be  re- 
placed by  others,  in  the  same  endless  circle ;  and  some  of  the 
Church  fathers,  such  as  Epiphanius  and  Augu.stine,  advanced 
the  additional  conception  of  a  Providential  march  of  the  hu- 
man race  towards  a  perfect  state  of  society.  Hugh  of  St.  Vic- 
tor and  Aquinas  recognized  a  progressive  revelation  with  suc- 
cessive dispensations.  Buchez  tells  us  that  in  the  fifteenth 
century  St.  John  Climaque  spoke  of  a  human  progressivcness, 
and  that  St.  Vincent  de  Lerins  maintained  a  necessary  increase 
in  human  knowledge,  from  age  to  age,  to  be  consistent  with 
the  constancy  of  the  Divine  word.  But  it  was  not  until  the 
spread  of  inductive  research  in  the  sixteenth  centur}',  that  dif- 
ferent sets  of  social  phenomena,  one  after  another,  began  to 
be  treated  with  anything  like  scientific  method  and  were  re- 
ferred to  invariable  laws. 

The  first  class  of  these  inquiries  related  simply  to  the  po- 
litical or  civil  development  of  society.  Machiavclli,  in  his 
"  Discourse  on  Titus  Livy,"  reproducing  Plato's  theory  of  cir- 
cular revolutions,  had  maintained  that  ancient  Rome  was  only 
recurring  in  modern  Italy,  and  on  the  basis  of  this  induction 
described  all  nations  as  at  first  choosing  their  kings,  then  com- 
bining against'  them  under  their  nobles,  at  length  revolting 
from  their  nobles,  then  again  choosing  kings  for  themselves, 
and  thus  ever  running  through  the  same  phases  of  monarchy, 
aristocracy  and  democracy.  Vico,  with  a  more  scientific 
spirit,  in  his  "  New  Science,"  generalizing  Roman  history  into 
an  ideal  history,  exhibited  an  inevitable  career  of  states  through 
the  successive  forms  of  theocracy,  aristocracy  and  democracy, 
under  corresponding  impulses  of  piety,  honor  and  justice,  as 
at  first  pursued  in  Pagan  Rome,  then  repeated  in  Christian 
Rome,  and  to  be  repeated  in  all  nations,  with  ever  widening 
circles,  until  each  shall  have  reached  the  purest  possible  form 
of  a  republic.  Boullanger,  by  means  of  a  work  entitled  "An- 
tiquity Unveiled,"  found  also  in  all  history  successively,  the- 
ocracy, aristocracy,  democracy;  the  age  of  gods,  the  age  of 
heroes,  the  age  of  mere   men ;  but  crowned  the  scries  with 


2i6  Tlie  Schism  in  Sociology.  [part  i. 

monarchy  instead  of  republicanism,  maintaining  that  mediaeval 
Catholicism  was  the  expiring  efifort  of  theocracy,  and  that  Eu- 
rope, having  been  first  savage,  then  pagan,  then  Christian,  had 
at  length  become  reasonable  under  the  existing  monarchy. 
Boulainvilliers,  as  a  noble  of  the  old  regime,  placed  aristocracy 
at  the  summit  of  these  various  revolutions.  And  numei-ous 
other  civil  historians,  such  as  Ferguson,  Guizot  and  Thierry, 
have  represented  all  European  nations  as  pursuing  the  same 
political  career  through  the  ever  returning  circle  of  aristocracy, 
monarchy,  democracy,  so  that  any  one  of  them  might  be  taken 
as  a  model  of  the  others. 

Another  class  of  inquiries  included  the  physical  as  well  as 
the  political  development  of  society.  Bodin,  the  first  to 
base  political  upon  physical  geography,  divided  nations  into 
northern,  southern  and  middle,  attributing  to  the  first  the  cli- 
matic qualities  of  physical  strength  and  courage,  to  the  second 
those  of  intellectual  power  and  culture,  and  to  the  third  more 
or  less  of  both,  according  to  their  latitude  in  the  temperate 
zone.  Montesquieu,  in  his  celebrated  work,  the  "Spirit  of 
Laws,"  treating  man  as  a  sort  of  political  plant,  moulded  by 
climate  and  legislation,  mapped  the  whole  earth  with  its  co- 
existing monarchies,  aristocracies  and  democracies,  as  so  many 
indigenous  products  of  different  continents  and  countries.  C. 
A.  Walckenaer,  who  wrote  under  the  first  French  Republic  an 
"  Essay  on  the  History  of  the  Human  Species,"  treating  man 
as  but  the  most  perfect  of  the  animal  races,  described  him  as 
impelled  by  his  passions  through  six  successive  stages,  the 
barbaric,  the  nomadic,  the  pastoral,  the  agricultural,  the  indus- 
trial, the  decadent,  from  gross  animality  up  to  the  highest  ma- 
terial civilization,  and  back  again  to  mere  animality.  The 
Abbe  Frere,  at  a  later  period,  in  his  "  Principles  of  the  Philos- 
ophy of  History,"  taking  the  bodily  development  as  a  type  of 
the  social,  divided  the  natural  life  of  nations  into  seven  ages, 
corresponding  to  the  seven  ages  of  man,  infancy,  boyhood, 
adolescence,  youth,  manhood,  fecundity,  maturity;  described 
the  physical  organization  of  society  during  these  periods;  and 
even  estimated  their  duration  by  the  civil  calendar  as  inclu- 
ding each  seven  generations,  or  seven  times  thirty-one  years. 
In  our  own  day,  the  speculations  of  Walckenaer  and  Frere  have 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Sociology.  217 

been  pushed  with  more  scientific  rigor  by  the  new  school  of 
anthropologists,  whilst  those  of  Bodin  and  Montesquieu  have 
been  more  fully  treated  by  Ritter  and  Guyot,  and  carried  to 
the  last  extreme  by  Odysse  Barot,  who  has  maintained  that 
all  nationalities  are  factitious  but  those  which  are  bounded  by 
river  basins  and  mountain  ranges,  and  that  the  perpetual 
oscillation  between  the  larger  artificial  and  the  smaller  natural 
nationalities  must  at  length  cause  the  political  map  of  Eu- 
rope to  settle  into  coincidence  with  the  outlines  of  physical 
geography. 

Another  class  of  inquiries  has  embraced  the  higher  intel- 
lectual development  of  society.  Bacon  had  imbued  his  Ad- 
vancement of  Learning  with  the  spirit  of  scientific  progress, 
and  Pascal  had  likened  the  human  race  to  an  individual  never 
dying  and  always  learning  through  successive  ages.  Turgot, 
in  his  "  Plan  of  Universal  History,"  then  distinguished  the  life 
of  humanity  from  that  of  plants  and  animals  as  involving  an 
accumulating  treasure  of  ideas  from  generation  to  generation, 
and  proceeding  through  three  great  intellectual  stages,  first  by 
referring  phenomena  to  supernatural  agents,  then  to  secondary 
causes,  and  at  last  to  mere  natural  laws.  St.  Simon  described 
such  stages  as  marked  by  synthetical  and  analytical  processes, 
organical  and  critical  epochs.  Comte  characterized  the  three 
stages  of  Turgot  and  St.  Simon  as  theological,  metaphysical 
and  positive,  and  applied  the  law  to  a  scale  of  the  sciences 
which,  under  its  operation,  arrive  at  the  positive  state  suc- 
cessively, in  the  order  of  their  relative  simplicity  and  generali- 
ty. The  late  Henry  T.  Buckle,  in  his  splendid  fragment,  the 
"  History  of  Civilization  in  England,"  whilst  exalting  physical 
causes  such  as  climate,  race,  food,  soil  and  scenery,  also  main- 
tained that  human  progress  is  determined  by  intellectual  laws, 
by  the  accumulation  and  the  diffusion  of  knowledge,  rather 
than  by  any  moral  improvement,  of  which  he  could  find  no 
evidence,  but  rather  the  contrary,  even  in  the  most  orthodox 
countries.  More  recently.  Dr.  Draper  of  New  York,  in  his 
scientific  "  History  of  the  Intellectual  Development  of  Eu- 
rope," proceeding  by  the  inductive  method  of  Vico,  upon  the 
physiological  hypothesis  of  Frere,  has  generalized  the  indi- 
vidual as  the  social  development  and  Greek  history  as  an  ideal 


2i8  TJie  ScJiism  in  Sociology.  [part  i. 

history',  in  accordance  with  which  he  has  sketched  European 
culture  through  the  successive  phases  of  an  age  of  creduhty 
in  its  infancy,  of  inquiry  in  its  childhood,  of  faith  in  its  youth, 
of  reason  in  its  manhood,  towards  a  final  age  of  decrepitude 
and  death. 

Another  class  of  inquirers  extended  to  the  moral  devel- 
opment of  society.  Butler  had  argued  that  virtue  ever  tends 
to  predominate  over  vice  in  civilized  communities.  Kant,  in 
his  "  Idea  of  a  Universal  History  from  a  Cosmopolitan  Point 
of  View,"  distinctly  maintained  that  ethical  phenomena,  the 
acts  of  free-will,  are  subordinate  to  general  laws,  under  which 
the  human  race  is  advancing  towards  its  only  rational  ideal  in 
a  universal  republic  of  virtue  and  justice.  Condorcet,  whose 
"Picture  of  the  Historic  Progress  of  the  Human  Mind"  was 
written  amid  the  horrors  of  the  French  Revolution,  heroically 
proclaimed  the  progressive  perfectibility  of  society,  while  it 
was  falling  into  ruins  around  him;  and  after  sketching  eight 
stages  through  which  society  has  passed,  from  barbarism  to 
civilization,  deduced  a  consequent  intellectual  progress,  which 
should  bring  with  it  such  moral  and  even  physical  improve- 
ment, that  crime  would  cease  and  men  become  immortal. 
Patrick  Dove,  a  Scottish  philosopher,  advancing  beyond 
Comte  and  Condorcet  with  Butler  and  Kant,  in  his  "Theory 
of  Human  Progression,"  argued  the  rational  probability  of  a 
reign  of  justice  in  the  earth,  as  involved  in  the  development 
and  application  of  the  moral  and  political  sciences,  following 
in  the  wake  of  the  mental  and  physical  sciences.  Francis 
Charles  Fourier,  boldly  anticipating  such  sober  presages  in 
his  "Theory  of  the  Four  Movements,"  believed  himself  to 
have  discovered  great  social  laws  in  the  normal  working  of 
individual  passions  and  tendencies,  acting  and  re-acting 
through  successive  stages  of  barbarism  and  civilization,  to- 
ward a  perfect  state  of  absolute  harmony  between  the  public 
and  private  weal.  And  with  more  scientific  rigor,  M.  Quete- 
let  of  Brussels,  in  his  sagacious  treatise  on  "The  Social  Sys- 
tem and  the  Laws  which  Govern  it,"  has  endeavored,  by  sta- 
tistical researches,  to  subject  moral  as  well  as  physical  facts^ 
marriages,  births,  deaths,  crimes,  miseries,  to  fixed  laws,  under 
the  operation  of  which  society,  like  the  individual,  ever  tends 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Sociology.  219 

to  a  gradual  predominance  of  the  spiritual  over  the  animal  na- 
ture. 

Besides  these  inquiries,  another  class  has  ascended  even 
to  the  religious  development  of  society.  Lessing,  in  his 
"  Education  of  the  Human  Race,"  referring  all  revelation  to 
an  infantile  and  pupilage  state  of  humanity,  placed  Judaism, 
Christianity,  and  other  religions  in  connection,  as  but  so  many 
phases  in  the  necessary  march  of  mankind  toward  maturity 
and  perfection.  Pierre  Leroux,  the  zealous  expositor  of  St. 
Simon,  in  a  treatise  on  "The  Origin  and  Future  of  Humanity," 
by  an  erudite  historical  criticism  has  essayed  to  trace  the  issue 
of  Judaism  and  Christianity  in  St.  Simonism  as  their  only  le- 
gitimate sequel  and  complement.  Comte,  with  a  bolder  gen- 
eralization, sought  to  sketch  the  religious  evolution  of  society 
through  the  phases  of  Fetichism,  Polytheism,  Monotheism,  to- 
wards a  Positivist  Religion  of  Humanity,  as  the  summit  of  his 
completed  series  of  sciences.  And  numerous  other  compara- 
tive theologians,  as  we  shall  see,  are  studying  the  religious 
phenomena  of  different  nations,  races  and  civilizations,  with 
the  view  of  bringing  them  under  general  social  laws. 

But  at  length  all  these  inquiries  have  been  merged  in  compre- 
hensive speculations  embracing  the  entire  development  of  so- 
ciety, physical,  intellectual,  moral  and  religious.  Herder,  with 
such  amplitude  of  view,  broached  the  magnificent  scheme  of 
a  universal  history  which,  starting  with  the  earth  as  a  planet 
among  the  stars,  slowly  forming  for  man,  should  include  all 
human  interests  in  all  climes  and  through  all  ages,  under  one 
Providential  plan  of  development.  The  French  sociologists, 
St.  Simon,  Fourier  and  Comte,  not  only  strove  to  identify 
their  laws  of  social  order  and  progress  with  the  universal  laws 
of  gravity  and  attraction,  as  alike  seen  in  the  balancing  of  suns 
and  planets  in  the  heavens,  and  in  the  play  of  opinions  and 
passions  upon  the  earth,  but  also  attempted  to  adjust  the  dif- 
ferent phases  of  the  whole  human  evolution,  the  intellectual 
as  dependent  upon  the  physical  and  the  moral  as  dependent 
upon  the  intellectual,  as  in  the  individual  organism.  The  recent 
German  school  of  realists,  following  Herbart,  have  treated  the 
science  of  history  in  a  still  more  profound  as  well  as  compre- 
hensive spirit.     Professor  Hermann  Lotze,  combining  the  ge- 


220  TJic  Schism  in  Sociology.  [part  i. 

nius  of  Herder  and  Leibnitz,  has  connected  natural  with  hu- 
man history,  maintained  the  perfect  consistency  of  free-will 
with  physical  and  social  laws,  and  sketched,  as  in  a  panoramic 
series,  the  entire  intellectual,  industrial,  aesthetical,  religious 
and  political  developments  of  mankind.  Professor  Conrad 
Hermann  of  Leipsic,  in  his  "  Philosophy  of  History,"  while 
asserting  the  reign  of  final  causes  in  history,  yet  propounds,  as 
its  general  law,  the  development  of  humanity  through  periods 
of  childhood,  youth,  manhood  and  age,  which  are  character- 
ized respectively  by  art,  religion,  industry  and  science,  and 
may  be  seen  illustrated  successively  in  the  Grecian,  Christian, 
English  and  German  types  of  civilization.  Professor  Lazarus, 
with  more  subtle  analysis,  has  been  seeking  to  found  sociology 
upon  psychology,  to  identify  the  laws  of  social  and  mental 
life,  by  tracing  the  growth  and  condensation  of  ideas  in  his- 
tory, as  expressed  by  poets,  sages,  heroes  and  saints,  and 
transmitted  in  art,  science,  politics  and  religion,  with  increas- 
ing facility  and  compactness,  from  generation  to  generation. 
Frederick  Von  Hellwald,  treating  the  human  species  as  a  tran- 
sient phenomenon  of  the  earth,  in  the  spirit  of  Darwin  and 
Haeckel,  has  written  an  extensive  "  History  of  Culture  "  in  all 
ages  and  nations,  based  upon  the  principle  that  the  develop- 
ment of  civilization  is  a  purely  natural  process  and,  like  any 
other,  governed  by  natural  laws.  Professor  Walter  Bagehot, 
in  his  work  styled  "Physics  and  Politics,"  has  endeavored  to 
carry  into  the  same  field  the  new  principles  of  natural  selec- 
tion and  inheritance,  as  explaining  the  nervous  or  mental 
powers  and  products  which  are  stored  and  propagated  in  the 
progress  of  civilization.  But  perhaps  the  most  scientific  as 
well  as  comprehensive  sociology  yet  attempted,  is  that  of  Mr. 
Herbert  Spencer,  who  has  included  human  society  under  a 
general  law  of  universal  evolution,  of  advance  from  the  homo- 
geneous to  the  heterogeneous,  which  governs  the  whole  know- 
able  universe,  from  the  primitive  nebula  up  to  the  most  highly 
organized  commonwealth,  the  same  in  the  globule  as  in  the 
planet,  in  the  embryo  as  in  the  nation,  in  the  habits  of  insects 
as  in  the  religions  of  peoples.  And  thus,  at  the  extreme  point 
of  the  inductive  tendency  in  history,  all  free-will  and  Provi- 
dence would  seem  to  have  vanished  under  the  reign  of  law. 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Sociology.  221 

As  to  the  third  problem,  the  destiny  of  society,  there  have 
been  also  two  rival  schools,  the  reactionists  and  the  pro- 
gressionists, or  the  corruptionists  and  the  perfectionists.  Ac- 
cording to  the  former,  society  is  corruptible  and  ever  deterio- 
rating. The  East  for  ages  had  been  immobile  and  hopeless. 
Many  Greek  and  Roman  writers,  from  Ovid  to  Horace,  had 
depicted  history  as  a  decline  from  a  golden  age,  with  in- 
creasing dissoluteness,  towards  anarchy  and  barbarism.  Chris- 
tian fathers  and  schoolmen,  from  Tertullian  to  Bernard,  had 
looked  upon  all  surrounding  civilization  as  the  mere  waste 
scaffolding  of  the  Church,  about  to  be  consumed  in  the  fires 
of  an  impending  judgment.  And  it  was  not  strange  that  at 
the  Reformation,  and  amid  the  political  convulsions  which 
followed  it,  these  dogmatic  views '  should  sometimes  darken 
the  whole  prospect  of  mankind.  By  large  sects  and  parties, 
as  we  shall  see,  the  temporal  interests  of  society  were  wholly 
sacrificed  to  the  eternal  interests  of  the  individual ;  earth  was 
treated  as  a  mere  scene  of  trial  for  heaven,  history  as  but  a 
course  of  vindictive  judgment  upon  depraved  humanity,  and 
time  as  only  a  brief  respite  for  accomplishing  the  number  of 
the  elect. 

But  besides  such  strictly  religious  forebodings  of  a  coming 
social  ruin,  there  were  others  of  a  more  political  and  scientific 
nature.  Machiavelli,  consistently  with  his  theory,  could  only 
describe  civil  society  as  ever  revolving  between  the  extremes 
of  anarchy  and  despotism,  through  epochs  of  probity  and 
corruption,  with  no  hope  of  advancing  beyond  the  vicious  cir- 
cle. Bodin,  though  he  read  political  progress  in  the  past, 
could  see  none  in  the  future,  but  rather  disclaimed  as  alike 
visionary  the  Republic  of  Plato  and  the  Utopia  of  More. 
Montesquieu,  Gibbon,  Ferguson  and  other  historians,  specu- 
lating upon  the  rise  and  fall  of  empires  and  civilizations,  seem 
to  have  reached  no  more  hopeful  philosophy  than  that  of  the 
poet,  as  he  mused  amid  the  ivy-covered  ruins  of  Rome : — 

There  is  one  moral  of  all  human  tales, 

'Tis  but  the  same  rehearsal  of  the  past; 
First  freedom  and  then  glory — when  that  fails. 

Wealth,  vice,  corruption — barbarism  at  last. 


222  Tlic  Schism  in  Sociology.  [part  i. 

Grotius,  with  the  pagan  Cicero,  simply  accepted  war  as  a  ne- 
cessary evil,  to  be  legalized  and  investigated,  without  any 
dreams  of  universal  peace.  An  English  clergyman,  Robert 
Malthus,  the  founder  of  a  school  of  political  economy  in  op- 
position to  Condorcet  and  Godwin,  boldly  formulated  it  as  a 
law  of  Providence,  susceptible  of  mathematical  proof,  that 
pauperism  is  an  ever  growing  evil  that  can  only  be  checked 
by  such  scourges  as  war,  famine  and  pestilence,  and  unless  pre- 
cluded by  celibacy,  must  tend  to  become  universal.  And  in 
our  day,  writers  abound  who,  more  or  less  consciously,  treat 
the  crimes  and  miseries  which  threaten  the  institutions  of  the 
family,  property  and  the  whole  social  order,  as  so  many  incu- 
rable diseases  in  the  body  politic,  with  a  prognosis  of  certain 
decay  and  death. 

There  have  also  been  like  forebodings  of  a  general  intellec- 
tual decline  of  society.  At  the  time  of  the  renaissance  it 
was  warmly  argued  by  eager  partizans,  that  the  ancients  far 
excelled  the  moderns  in  wisdom  and  knowledge,  as  it  is  still 
occasionally  maintained  that  the  lost  arts  and  sciences  would 
quite  eclipse  our  own  enlightened  age.  An  opinion  that  in 
the  long  course  of  time  there  are  certain  ebbs  and  floods  of 
the  sciences,  without  any  real  progress,  was  ranked  by  Bacon 
as  the  chief  obstacle  to  their  advancement  in  his  day.  The 
reactionary  critics  of  the  French  revolution,  De  Maistre,  De 
Bonald,  Chateaubriand,  termed  the  history  of  philosophy  no- 
thing but  a  disgusting  cycle  of  errors,  treated  Bacon  and 
Descartes  as  mere  charlatans,  and  maintained  that  there  had 
been  little  or  no  real  progress  even  in  the  physical  sciences. 
And  whole  schools  of  philosophical  thinkers  are  still  insisting 
that  the  moral  and  political  sciences,  after  ages  of  effort,  con- 
tinue stationary  and  circuitous  ;  that  the  metaphysical  sciences 
are  sheer  illusions  ;  and,  in  fact,  that  all  science  is  but  doomed 
to  expire  in  nescience. 

Still  more  rigorous  predictions  have  been  based  upon  the 
supposed  tendencies  to  a  general  physical  decline  of  so- 
ciety. A  scientific  color  has  been  sought  for  them,  as  we 
have  seen,  in  the  influence  of  disastrous  climates,  in  the  de- 
cay of  degenerate  races,  in  the  natural  mortality  of  nations, 
and  in  the  gradual  exhaustion  of  the  earth  itself     Ethnolo- 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Sociology.  223 

gists,  such  as  Schoolcraft,  Kennedy  and  Nott,  can  see  no  pro- 
gressive future  for  the  effete  nations  of  the  East,  the  enervated 
peoples  of  the  South  and  the  ice-bound  tribes  of  the  North. 
The  Abbe  Frere,  consistently  with  his  physiological  law  al- 
lotting to  nations  a  natural  term  of  life  as  fixed  as  the  three- 
score years  and  ten  of  individuals,  held  that  they  could  only 
be  providentially  carried  beyond  the  stationary  or  decrepit 
state.  David  Ricardo,  of  the  same  dismal  school  with  Mal- 
thus,  took  it  as  a  principle  of  economic  science,  that  as  popu- 
lation increases,  the  poorer  soils  become  occupied,  the  fertility 
of  the  richer  soils  diminishes,  labor  depreciates,  and  general 
impoverishment  becomes  inevitable.  Professor  Stanley  Jevons 
has  raised  the  alarm,  that  the  coal-beds  of  England  are  inade- 
quate to  meet  the  coming  wants  of  that  country.  Mr.  Gregg, 
as  a  modern  Cassandra,  includes  among  his  "  Rocks  Ahead," 
a  gradual  exhaustion  of  the  material  resources  of  nature,  as 
well  as  a  growing  social  degeneracy.  And  speculative  geolo- 
gists have  predicted  an  ultimate  state  of  the  globe,  when  all 
civilization  shall  have  perished  under  the  glaciers  of  a  uni- 
versal winter. 

At  the  same  time,  these  different  presages  of  the  religious, 
moral,  intellectual  and  physical  decline  of  society  have  been 
combined  and  rendered  systematic  and  imposing.  The  arts, 
sciences,  polities,  religions  of  successive  civilizations,  have  been 
supposed  to  observe  great  cyclical  laws  of  growth  and  decay 
as  fixed  as  the  succession  of  the  seasons,  the  periods  of  hu- 
man life,  or  the  cosmic  eras  of  planets,  stars  and  galaxies. 
Fourier  himself,  though  he  assigned  to  the  human  race  a  per- 
fect manhood  of  seventy  thousand  years,  to  be  reached 
through  the  successive  stages  of  Edenism,  savagism,  patriarchy, 
barbarism,  civilization,  described  it  as  then  declining  through 
the  same  stages  in  an  inverse  order,  until  it  should  become 
extinguished  with  the  earth,  and  the  earth  itself  revert  to  the 
nebulous  dust  of  the  Milky  Way.  Ernest  Von  Lasaulx,  ap- 
plying the  law  of  vitality,  of  birth  and  death,  to  nations  as 
well  as  individuals,  and  to  the  race  itself,  with  all  its  organic 
products,  its  arts,  sciences,  politics  and  religions,  has  main- 
tained that  society  evolves  its  classes  of  peasant,  soldier,  priest 
and  prince  only  to  dissolve  them  again  by  the  reverse  process; 


224  The  Schism  in  Sociology.  [part  i. 

that  after  the  heroes  come  the  sages,  after  the  doers  the  think- 
ers, after  the  artists  the  critics;  and  that  already  European 
civihzation,  though  at  its  flower,  gives  signs  of  exhaustion  and 
decHne.  Matthew  Arnold,  in  some  of  his  plaintive  poems,  is 
sighing  over  the  same  supposed  decadence  of  modern  cul- 
ture. And  Dr.  Draper,  extending  with  scientific  rigor' the 
law  of  intellectual  development  to  societies  as  well  as  indi- 
viduals, has  described  Greece  as  flourishing  and  decaying 
through  its  childhood,  manhood  and  senility,  Europe  as  just 
entering  its  mature  epoch  of  reason,  China  as  waning  toward 
its  decrepitude,  and  the  earth  itself  as  growing  hoary  with 
wisdom,  only  then  to  pass  away  in  the  succession  of  dissolving 
worlds,  like  a  drop  that  sparkles  in  a  summer  cloud. 

According  to  the  progressionists  and  perfectionists,  how- 
ever, society  is  perfectible  and  ever  improving.  And  it  was 
no  new  opinion.  The  Western  nations  had  long  been  restless 
and  hopeful.  In  the  Republic  of  Plato,  and  among  the  senti- 
ments of  Cicero  and  Seneca,  had  been  broached  many  ideas 
of  social  advancement,  political  as  well  as  moral  and  intel- 
lectual. The  community  of  goods  at  Pentecost  had  been  ad- 
vocated by  Epiphanius  and  Chrysostom,  illustrated  by  the 
monastic  orders  and  witnessing  sects  of  the  middle  ages,  and 
at  the  Reformation  more  or  less  rigorously  applied  by  the  Ana- 
baptists of  Germany  and  the  Puritans  of  England.  The  Mil- 
lenarians  of  the  early  and  modern  Church  had  been  looking 
for  a  Messianic  reign  of  peace,  when  the  whole  earth  should 
become  a  paradise.  And  with  such  purely  religious  aspira- 
tions after  social  perfection  also  came  drearhs  of  moral  and 
political  improvement.  Sir  Thomas  More,  presenting  to  King 
Henry  VIII.  and  Cardinal  Wolsey  a  work  in  which  he  de- 
scribed England  as  an  imaginary  island  named  "Utopia,"  or 
No-where,  had  sketched  his  ideal  commonwealth,  which 
should  equalize  all  classes,  fortunes  and  manners  under  a 
patriarchal  reign  of  frugality,  innocence  and  peace.  James 
Harrington,  modelling  his  "  Oceana  "  after  the  manner  of  Plato's 
Atlantis,  had  looked  forward  through  the  storm  of  the  Eng- 
lish revolution  to  the  halcyon  picture  of  a  free  republic,  fairer 
than  that  of  Venice,  but  which  could  only  be  attempted  by 
his  political  descendants  in  the  true  Atlantis  beyond  the  seas. 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Sociology.  225 

Morelli,  the  first  of  the  French  sociahsts,  in  his  "Basihade  or 
Floating  Island,"  had  depicted,  under  a  political  allegory,  that 
caricature  community  of  goods,  that  abolition  of  property, 
rank  and  family,  which  was  afterwards  to  be  so  terribly  illus- 
trated in  the  reign  of  terror.  St.  Simon  then  emerging  from 
the  American  and  French  revolutions  as  a  philosophical  ob- 
server, with  his  proposed  "  Reorganization  of  European  So- 
ciety," announced  the  peaceful  coming  of  such  Utopias,  under 
his  discovered  law  of  organic  and  critical  epochs,  with  the 
charms  of  liberty,  equality  and  fraternity.  Victor  Consider- 
ant,  the  zealous  interpreter  of  Fourier,  in  his  "Social  Desti- 
ny," has  endeavored  to  show  how  individuals,  if  once  released 
from  existing  false  organizations,  would  spontaneously  group 
themselves  in  little  communities  or  phalansteries,  under  the 
law  of  passional  attraction,  with  an  absolute  harmony  of 
opinions  and  interests.  Mr.  Nordhofif  has  sketched  such  ex- 
periments as  tried  in  different  parts  of  the  country.  The  red 
republican  Cabet,  transferring  the  Utopia  of  More  from  the 
island  to  the  continent  by  his  imaginary  "Travels  in  Icaria," 
has  drawn  a  brilliant  picture  of  modern  French  civilization,  as 
transformed,  from  the  smallest  village  up  to  the  capitol,by  the 
principles  of  Communism.  And  numerous  other  sounder 
philanthropists,  from  William  Penn  to  Charles  Sumner,  as- 
sailing the  wider  evils  of  war,  slavery  and  caste  as  but  legal- 
ized crimes  against  civilization,  have  been  predicting  their  ulti- 
mate extinction  under  the  natural  laws  of  trade,  diplomacy 
and  amity,  by  means  of  commercial  leagues,  peace  societies 
and  congresses  of  nations. 

There  have  been  still  more  sanguine  dreams  of  intellectu- 
al as  well  as  political  progress  and  perfection.  Campa- 
nella  had  imagined  his  "City  of  the  Sun,"  whose  inhabi- 
tants, living  by  intelligence,  were  devoted  to  the  pursuit  of 
philosophy  and  the  sciences,  whose  chief  magistrate  was 
chosen  over  his  rivals  as  the  greatest  metaphysician,  with  the 
title  of  Sun,  and  whose  very  marriages  were  scientifically  as- 
sorted with  a  view  to  the  intellectual  perfection  of  the  species. 
Bacon,  in  his  "New  Atlantis,"  had  dreamed  of  a  similar  home 
of  perfect  science  as  the  distant  goal  to  a  future  advancement 
of  learning,  compared  with  which   antiquity  would  seem  but 


226  TJlc  Schism  in  Sociology.  [part  i. 

the  childhood  of  the  world.  Perrault,  taking  the  part  of  the 
moderns  against  the  ancients,  had  likened  the  apparent  ebbs 
and  floods  of  the  arts  and  sciences  to  rivers,  which  plunge 
awhile  under  ground,  only  to  emerge  again  with  increased 
fullness  and  power.  The  progressive  reformers  of  the  French 
Revolution,  Turgot,  Condorcet  and  St.  Simon,  then  traced  the 
career  of  past  philosophy,  through  successive  intellectual 
stages,  towards  positive  knowledge,  hailed  (Bacon  and  Des- 
cartes as  the  heralds  of  a  new  era  of  enlightenment,  and 
showed  the  perfection  already  attained  in  the  physical  sciences. 
And  whole  schools  of  philosophical  mystics  are  claiming  that 
they  have  completed  the  circle  of  the  mental  and  moral  sciences, 
that  they  have  brought  the  metaphysical  sciences  within  the 
grasp  of  their  own  consciousness,  and,  in  short,  have  seized 
all  science  by  a  sort  of  intuitive  omniscience. 

There  have  been  still  bolder  visions  of  a  coming  physical  pro- 
gress and  perfection.  Scientific  data  have  been  sought  for  them 
in  the  evidence  of  improving  climates  and  species,  in  the  sur- 
vival of  favored  races  and  nations,  and  in  the  industrial  devel- 
opment of  the  globe.  Palaeontologists  have  contrasted-  the 
present  refined  floras  and  faunas  with  the  coarser  organisms  of 
the  primeval  earth.  Ethnologists,  such  as  Crawfurd,  Tiedemann 
and  Guyot,  have  dwelt  upon  the  indestructible  vitality  of  the 
Jewish  blood,  in  contrast  with  the  Egyptian,  the  Greek  and 
the  Roman ;  upon  the  increasing  size  and  quality  of  the  An- 
glo-Saxon brain,  and  upon  the  unprecedented  mixture  of  races 
and  climates  in  America,  as  tending  to  the  development  of  a 
new  and  higher  type  of  nationality.  Politicar  economists,  like 
Henry  Carey,  reversing  the  dreary  doctrines  of  Malthus  and 
Ricardo,  have  maintained,  with  elaborate  arguments  and  sta- 
tistics, that  supcrfecundity  disappears  as  we  ascend  the  animal 
and  intellectual  scale,  that  the  poorer  soils  are  exhausted  be- 
fore the  richer,  and  that  science  and  industry  admit  no  limit 
to  the  means  of  subsistence.  And  more  speculative  socialists, 
such  as  Condorcet,  St.  Simon  and  Fourier,  giving  reins  to 
their  fancy,  have  looked  forward  to  a  time  when  the  human 
body,  through  physiological  skill,  shall  become  practically 
immortal,  when  Homers  and  Newtons  shall  abound  by  the 
million,  and  when,  under  organized  industry,  the  whole  desert 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Sociology.  22/ 

earth  shall  have  been  reclaimed  and  transformed  into  a  garden, 
and  even  the  sea  converted  into  a  wholesome  beverage. 

At  times,  too,  all  these  glowing  prophecies  of  moral,  intel- 
lectual and  physical  progress  have  been  blended  into  one  bril- 
liant picture  of  human  perfection.  It  has  been  argued  that 
the  arts,  sciences,  polities  and  religions  of  successive  eras,  in- 
stead of  running  in  fatal  cycles,  are  ever  ad\'ancing,  as  under 
spiral  laws  of  average  progression,  which  still  preserve  and 
improve  the  species,  though  individuals  live  and  die,  though 
nations  rise  and  fall,  though  mighty  civilizations  flourish  and 
decay.  Vico  himself,  while  he  saw  only  the  same  stages  ever 
returning  in  history,  seems  to  have  admitted  that,  with  each 
recurrence,  they  were  enriched  with  nobler  manners  and  laws, 
thus  promising  a  future  Italy  as  much  better  than  the  present 
as  Christian  Rome  was  better  than  Pagan.  Pascal  and  Turgot 
not  only  distinguished  the  human  species  from  the  individuals 
which  compose  it,  as  knowing  no  birth  or  death,  or  childhood 
or  age,  but  exalted  it  over  those  vegetable  and  animal  races 
which  only  move  in  the  same  cycles,  generation  after  genera- 
tion, while  it  is  ever  progressing,  through  successive  epochs 
and  civilizations,  with  growing  knowledge,  wealth  and  power. 
Jouffroy,  in  much  the  same  spirit,  has  ingeniously  argued  that 
this  mobility,  this  progressiveness  of  humanity,  is  due  to  its 
intelligence,  to  the  succession  of  ideas,  as  expressed  by  lead- 
ing minds  and  instituted  by  the  masses ;  that  already  the 
march  of  intelligence,  the  growth  of  ideas,  can  be  discerned 
in  the  past  career  of  mankind;  and  that  of  the  three  great 
civilizations  now  on  the  earth,  the  Christian  is  destined  to 
prevail  over  the  Mohammedan  and  the  Brahminical,  by  virtue 
of  its  intellectual  superiority  and  vigor,  under  the  leader- 
ship of  the  foremost  nations,  England,  Germany  and  France. 
Other  writers,  with  as  much  patriotism  as  philanthropy,  have 
dwelt  upon  the  prospects  of  American  civilization,  starting 
with  the  accumulated  advantages  of  the  European,  Asiatic  and 
African  civilizations,  and  resuming  all  climates,  races,  polities 
and  religions.  Butler  even  hinted  long  ago,  as  a  strictly  sci- 
entific conjecture,  that  reason  tends  to  predominate  over  brute 
force,  and  virtue  over  vice,  not  only  in  some  future  state  of 
society   on   earth,   but  throughout   the    universe,   in    distant 


228  The  Schism  in  Sociology.  [part  i. 

scenes  and  periods,  where  all  pure  intelligences  shall  have 
discovered  each  other  and  combined  together  under  the  laws 
of  intellectual  and  moral  affinity  and  progress.  Numerous 
philosophers,  too,  from  purely  rational  premises,  have  been  ar- 
guing that  it  is  the  very  tendency  of  civilization,  as  well  as  aim 
of  history,  to  subdue  the  whole  earth  to  the  service  of  man, 
to  free  him  from  all  physical  as  well  as  political  tyranny,  and 
to  open  before  him  an  indefinite  career  of  expansion  and  im- 
provement. And  certainly,  if  we  carefully  study  the  several 
material,  intellectual,  moral  and  religious  developments  of  so- 
ciety, in  their  normal  order  and  mutual  dependence,  it  will  not 
seem  wholly  visionary  to  project  their  combined  issues  in 
some  remote  epoch,  when  art  shall  have  triumphed  over  na- 
ture, science  over  error,  society  over  the  individual.  Provi- 
dence over  humanity,  and  earth  shall  be  absorbed  into  heaven, 
as  a  star  fades  into  the  dawn. 

At  length,  as  the  final  result  of  the  two  separative  processes 
which  have  been  traced,  we  now  find  ourselves  in  that  third 
stage  of  complete  indifference,  where  the  whole  biblical  soci- 
ology, the  doctrines  of  Providence,  of  the  Church  and  of  the 
millennium  are  abandoned  as  of  no  scientific  authority  or  value. 
Whilst  great  civilians,  historians  and  philanthropists  have 
claimed  their  hypotheses  concerning  the  origin,  course  and 
destiny  of  society  to  be  compatible  with  the  teachings  of  Scrip- 
ture, or  have  ignored  such  teachings  simply  from  philosophi- 
cal taste  or  prudence,  a  wing  of  the  modern  school  is  striving 
to  exclude  them  as  wholly  unscientific,  and  even  as  obstructive 
to  the  true  science  of  humanity.  Comte,  as  the  declared 
founder  of  sociology,  maintained  that  until  his  day  it  had  lin- 
gered in  the  theological  or  superstitious  stage  of  scientific  de- 
velopment, hampered  by  the  notion  of  a  Providence,  very 
much  as  astronomy  had  been  retarded  by  mythical  arch- 
angels, and  chemistry  bewitched  by  infinitesimal  spirits.  Mr. 
J.  S.  Mill,  defining  the  terms  of  the  new  science,  adopted 
Comte's  law  of  the  universal  evolution  of  humanity,  but  with- 
out even  stating  the  central  problems  of  sacred  history  and 
prophecy.  The  late  Mr.  Buckle  introduced  his  history  of 
civilization  with  a  discussion  of  the  dogmas  of  free-will  and 
predestination,  or  supernatural  interference,  as  having   been, 


CHAP,  in.]  Biblical  Sociology.  229 

hitherto,  the  chief  impediments  to  the  formation  of  a  historical 
science.  Dr.  Draper  has  claimed  that  his  laws  of  develop- 
ment are  compatible  with  individual  free-will,  and  occasionally 
recognizes  the  fact  of  a  Supreme  Being,  though  without  dis- 
cussing the  corresponding  question  of  His  relation  to  such 
laws  in  history.  But  Mr.  Spencer,  as  unable  to  conceive  of  a 
Providence  as  of  a  Creation,  lays  it  down  as  a  preliminary 
principle,  that  for  those  who  entertain  that  conception,  there 
can  be  no  such  thing  as  sociology,  properly  so  called. 

On  the  revealed  side  of  the  same  science,  however,  may  be 
traced  corresponding  degrees  of  divergence  from  the  rational 
theory  of  society.  In  the  first  stage  occurred  the  great  reli- 
gious revolt  from  a  false  theocracy,  the  vicious  predominance 
of  the  court  of  Rome.  It  was  the  reforming  period,  when  the 
Church  was  everywhere  returning  to  its  normal  position  and 
relations  as  a  spiritual  body,  independent  of  the  State,  and  its 
new  founders  were  striving  to  reorganize  it  on  more  Scrip- 
tural and  rational  principles.  Savonarola,  Wickliff  and  Huss 
had  led  the  way  as  martyrs  to  ecclesiastical  liberty.  Chan- 
cellor Gerson  of  Paris,  styled  the  most  Christian  Doctor,  in 
the  great  council  of  Constance,  took  the  first  bold  stand  against 
that  papal  autocracy,  before  which  subsequent  councils  and 
churches  only  quailed  in  submission,  until  Luther  burnt  the 
pope's  bull  at  Wittemberg.  Thomas  Cartwright,  whose  Di- 
rectory of  Church  Government  cost  him  his  chair  at  Cam- 
bridge, led  the  first  English  Presbytery  against  that  alleged 
divine  right  of  bishops,  which  distracted  the  British  kingdoms 
with  sectarian  warfare  until  the  separate  establishment  of  the 
churches  of  England  and  Scotland.  Godwin  and  Nye  were 
at  the  same  time  assailing  the  divine  right  of  presbyteiy. 
Jeremy  Taylor,  when  a  schoolmaster  in  Wales  (through  what 
he  termed  the  gentleness  and  mercy  of  a  noble  enemy),  wrought 
out  those  principles  of  religious  toleration  in  his  Liberty  of 
Prophesying,  which,  though  soon  repudiated  by  the  Act  of 
Uniformity,  were  yet  to  be  vindicated  in  the  American 
churches.  George  Whitefield,  the  apostle  to  the  new  world, 
whose  common-place  sermons  kindled  the  young  colonies  as 
with  a  tongue  of  flame,  breathed  that  spirit  of  evangelical  alli- 
ance which  still  glows   in  both  hemispheres.     John  Wesley 


230  The  ScJizsm  in  Sociology.  [part  i. 

meanwhile  was  founding  a  new  eclectic  polity,  destined  to 
rival  the  oldest  historical  churches.  At  length  Thomas  Chal- 
mers, the  greatest  reformer  since  Knox,  sundering  life-long 
ties  to  a  state-religion  which  he  had  eloquently  defended  in 
his  Christian  Polity,  led  forth  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland  as 
pioneer  in .  a  process  of  disestablishment,  already  spreading 
throughout  Great  Britain,  and  indeed  throughout  Christen- 
dom. And  in  connection  with  various  practical  movements 
towards  unity  of  faith  and  worship  among  the  Greek  and  An- 
glican, the  Episcopal  and  Presbyterian  communions,  large- 
hearted  Christian  scholars,  of  every  name,  are  proceeding, 
with  fresh  historical  research,  to  define  anew  the  Scriptural 
doctrine  of  one  Catholic  and  Apostolic  Church  as  the  mysti- 
cal body  of  Christ  and  temple  of  the  Holy  Ghost. 

But  meanwhile,  in  the  next  stage  of  indifference,  as  if  wholly 
unconscious  of  the  new  science  of  society  which  has  been 
emerging,  have  appeared  various  ecclesiastical  schools  still 
adhering  to  traditional  dogmas  concerning  the  nature,  the 
history,  and  the  triumph  of  the  Church.  As  to  the  nature  of 
the  Church,  opinions  diverged  at  the  Reformation.  Roman 
Catholics,  such  as  Bellarmin,  defined  the  Church  a  visible  so- 
ciety, or  polity,  as  visible  as  the  Kingdom  of  France  or  the 
Republic  of  Venice,  composed  of  men  united  in  the  profession 
of  the  Christian  faith  and  the  communion  of  the  sacraments, 
under  the  government  of  lawful  pastors,  and  chiefly  of  the 
Roman  Pontiff  who,  as  the  successor  of  St.  Peter  and  vicar  of 
Christ,  is'  invested  with  supreme  dominion,  both  temporal  and 
spiritual.  Anglicans,  such  as  Palmer,  have  substantially 
adopted  the  same  definition,  rejecting  only  the  primacy  or  su- 
premacy of  the  Bishop  of  Rome.  Some  Presbyterians  have 
been  inclined  to  a  similar  view,  restricting  the  apostolic  suc- 
cession to  presbyters  as  on  a  par  with  bishop?  or  prelates. 
But  the  great  mass  of  Protestant  and  Reformed  divines,  such 
as  Luther,  Calvin  and  Zwingle,  defined  the  Church  an  invisi- 
ble society,  or  communion  of  saints,  of  which  Christ  is  the 
only  spiritual  head,  and  all  true  believers  the  members, 
wheresoever  they  may  be  found,  and  howsoever  they  may  be 
organized,  whether  with  a  polity  derived  historically  from  the 
Church  of  the  Apostles,  as  by  the  Episcopalians,  or  simply 


CHAP.  III.]  Biblical  Sociology.  231 

copied  after  the  model  of  that  Church  as  by  the  Presbyte- 
rians, Methodists  and  Lutherans,  or  substantially  framed  upon 
the  same  ecclesiastical  principles,  as  by  the  Baptists,  Congrega- 
tionalists  and  Unitarians.  And  while  all  have  agreed  in  re- 
jecting the  Roman  dogma  of  the  supremacy  of  the  Church 
over  the  State,  they  have  differed  endlessly,  in  theory  and 
practice,  as  to  the  extent  to  which  the  Church  should  be  in- 
dependent of  the  State,  or  may  be  susceptible  of  union  and 
combination  with  it. 

As  to  the  history  of  the  Church,  the  great  body  of  ecclesi- 
astical historians  has  shown  a  like  diversity  of  views,  with 
the  same  apparent  disregard  of  the  accompanying  secular  de- 
velopment. First  came  the  Protestant  schools,  constructing 
history,  polemically,  against  Roman  Catholicism.  Mathias 
Flacius  of  Illyricum,  organizing  German  learning  at  Magde- 
burg in  a  collection  of  topical  histories  termed  the  "  Magde- 
burg Centuries,"  ignored  all  European  civilization  but  the 
primitive  and  reformed  Churches,  as  connected  by  a  few  anti- 
papal  witnesses  of  the  truth  in  the  middle  ages.  Then  fol- 
lowed the  Roman  Catholic  school  constructing  history,  po- 
lemically, against  Protestantism.  Cardinal  Caesar  Baronius, 
stigmatizing  the  folios  of  Flacius  as  mere  centuries  of  Satan, 
and  substituting  for  them  his  own  "Ecclesiastical  Annals," 
packed  from  the  Vatican  library,  admitted  nothing  into  Euro- 
pean civilization  but  the  mediaeval  papacy,  classing  the  Re- 
formation itself  with  Arianism,  as  a  mere  incidental  heresy. 
And  to  this  school  belonged  the  still  more  polemical  histories 
of  the  Gallican  prelates,  Fleury  and  Bossuet.  Afterwards 
appeared  the  various  sectarian  schools,  constructing  history 
exclusively  in  the  interest  of  some  particular  church  or  de- 
nomination. David  Calderwood,  deprived  of  office  for  his 
opposition  to  prelacy,  wrote  his  standard  "History  of  the 
Church  of  Scotland"  against  the  Episcopalians;  Peter  Hey- 
lin,  reinstated  by  the  Restoration,  composed  his  retaliatory 
"  Histor}^  of  the  Presbyterians;"  Daniel  Neal,  in  his  well- 
known  histor}^  defended  the  Puritans  against  both  Presbyte- 
rians and  Episcopalians  ;  and  a  host  of  other  ecclesiastical 
partizans  converted  English  history  into  a  battle-ground, 
■  where  primitive  apostles,  elders  and  synagogues  were  made 


232  The  Schism  in  Sociology.  [part  i. 

to  reappear  and  masquerade  as  modern  bishops,  presbyters 
and  congregations,  in  defiance  of  all  surrounding  civilization. 
At  length  came  the  pietistic  schools,  constructing  history  ex- 
clusively in  the  interest  of  mere  personal  religion.  Joseph 
Milner,  an  English  clergyman  of  the  evangelical  type,  com- 
posed his  Church  History  avowedly  on  a  new  plan,  for  the 
celebration  of  genuine  piety  alone,  deliberately  excluding  all 
other  elements  of  Christian  culture  as  unedifying.  And  other 
writers  of  the  same  school,  such  as  Arnold,  in  his  Impartial 
History  of  the  Church  and  of  Heretics,  have  carried  this  un- 
scientific method  to  the  extreme  of  glorifying  mere  schismatics 
as  the  heroes  of  Christianity,  and  making  all  contemporaneous 
history,  with  all  great  secular  interests,  revolve  around  a  party 
or  a  sect. 

As  to  the  triumph  of  the  Church,  or  Church  of  the  future, 
opinions  were  also  divided.  Roman  Catholics  drew  the  dis- 
tinction between  the  Church  militant  and  the  Church  tri- 
umphant, including  in  the  former  the  earthly  hierarchy  of 
clerical  orders,  headed  by  the  Pope,  and  in  the  latter  the 
heavenly  hierarchy  of  saints  and  angels,  crowned  with  the 
Virgin  Mary.  Protestants  generally  restricted  their  distinction 
between  the  invisible  and  visible  Church  to  this  world  alone, 
and  looked  for  the  coincidence  of  the  two,  in  a  perfected 
Christian  polity,  at  the  end  of  the  present  dispensation ;  some 
anticipating  this  Church  of  the  future  in  the  ordinary  course 
of  history  and  Providence ;  but  the  great  mass,  especially  the 
Millennarians,  predicting  it  as  a  new  miraculous  economy,  to 
be  introduced  by  the  visible  return  and  reign  of  Christ  at 
Jerusalem. 

In  the  third  and  last  stage  of  indifference,  social  science  and 
civil  history  have  been  virtually  repudiated  as  unchurchly  and 
unchristian,  and  attempts  made  to  construct  an  exclusively 
biblical  doctrine  of  society.  While  some  large-hearted  and 
far-seeing  divines,  such  as  Neander  and  Milman,  have  per- 
ceived the  vital  connection  of  civilization  with  Christianity  in 
history,  and  others,  such  as  Arnold  and  Rothe,  have  looked 
forward  to  their  consummate  union  in  an  ideal  Christian  state, 
yet  these  have  been  too  exceptional  to  form  a  great  guiding 
class,  and  as  yet  could  do  little  more  than  admit  and  lament 


CHAP.  III.]  Biblical  Sociology.  233 

the  narrow  unhistorical  spirit  which  characterizes  the  body  of 
modern  ecclesiastical  learning.  Dr.  John  Henry  Newman, 
before  he  had  the  zeal  of  a  convert  to  Catholicism,  declared, 
in  his  Essay  on  the  Development  of  Christian  Doctrine,  that 
the  only  English  writer,  who  had  any  claims  to  be  considered 
an  ecclesiastical  historian,  was  the  infidel  Gibbon,  and  that  the 
popular  religion  seems  scarcely  to  recognize  the  twelve  ao-es 
between  the  Councils  of  Nicsea  and  Trent,  except  as  illus- 
trating Protestant  interpretations  of  certain  prophecies  of  St. 
Peter  and  St.  Paul.  Dr.  J.  Addison  Alexander,  in  an  article 
on  the  History  of  Doctrines,  dwells  upon  an  unhistorical  pe- 
culiarity of  the  American  mind,  which  leads  it  to  the  perpetual 
resuscitation  of  exploded  absurdities  and  renewal  of  attempts 
long  since  proved  abortive,  and  has  forced  religion  into  a  false 
position  in  reference  to  the  important  interests  of  science,  art 
and  civil  government.  The  late  Stephen  Colwell  was  so  con- 
vinced of  this  divorce  of  the  Church  from  all  modern  social 
science,  that  he  published  a  work  entitled  "  New  Themes  for 
the  Protestant  Clergy :  Creeds  without  Charity,  Theology 
without  Humanity,  and  Protestantism  without  Christianity." 
And  the  same  spirit  lingers  even  in  the  older,  more  historical 
nations.  The  reactionary  Catholic  school  in  France  simply 
repudiates  the  abounding  socialistic  speculations  of  the  age  as 
the  mere  froth  of  the  Revolution  on  the  last  wave  of  Pro- 
testantism. And  even  German  orthodoxy,  forced  into  a  pure- 
ly apologetic  position  by  the  extraordinaiy  growth  of  histori- 
cal study  and  infidel  criticism,  has  seemed  to  be  making  a 
breach  rather  than  an  alliance  between  Christianity  and  civil- 
ization. At  a  time  when  the  social  and  political  sciences,  in 
all  countries,  are  pursued  with  unprecedented  vigor  and  suc- 
cess, and  when,  too,  reformers  and  philanthropists  are  bor- 
rowing the  Scripture  ideas  of  liberty,  fraternity  and  charity, 
and  caricaturing  before  our  eyes  the  Christian  community  of 
goods,  the  leading  ecclesiastics  of  the  day  continue  to  repre- 
sent Providence  as  a  systematic  judgment  throughout  history, 
civilization  as  an  abortive  growth  of  sin,  the  Church  as  a  mere 
training  school  for  heaven,  and  the  millennium  as  an  impend- 
ing social  catastrophe. 

And  thus  sociology,  the  science  of  organized  humanity,  if 


234  Tlic  Schism  in   Theology.  [part  i. 

it  is  to  be  disorganized  by  the  indifferent  spirit,  instead  of 
realizing  the  true  ideal  of  prophecy  and  philanthropy,  would 
only  revive  the  dreams  of  mediaeval  monks  and  fanatics,  or 
amuse  us  with  visionary  Utopias  and  reforms. 


The  Schism  in  Theology. 

In  theology,  at  length,  the  two  antagonists  will  be  found 
parted  from  each  other  as  by  an  impassable  gulf 

On  the  rational  side  may  be  traced  a  gradual  divergence 
from  the  whole  revealed  doctrine  of  religion.  In  the  first 
of  the  three  stages  of  departure  came  the  glad  escape  from  a 
false  biblical  theology,  from  the  dry,  systematic  divinity  of 
the  schools.  It  was  the  time  when  the  works  of  God  began 
to  be  studied  together  with  His  word,  and  brave  spirits  and 
free-thinkers,  as  well  as  intelligent  believers,  were  assertinsf 
the  rights  of  reason  against  mere  authority  in  religion.  Rai- 
mond  of  Sebonde,  a  professor  of  medicine  and  a  loyal  disciple 
both  of  Aquinas  and  Albertus,  early  in  the  fifteenth  century 
had  written  a  treatise  on  the  Book  of  Creation,  in  which  na- 
ture and  revelation  were  described  as  two  volumes,  inter- 
preting each  other,  whilst  the  doctrine  of  divine  rewards  and 
punishments  was  deduced  from  the  moral  constitution  of  man 
as  well  as  the  law  of  God.  Montaigne,  having  translated  the 
work  of  Raimond  under  the  new  title  of  Natural  Theology, 
had  proclaimed  in  France  that  right  of  free  examination  into 
religion,  which  was  afterwards  to  be  more  distinctly  enun- 
ciated by  Collins  in  England  and  Reimarus  in  Germany. 
Herbert  of  Cherbury,  the  father  of  modern  deism,  in  his  trea- 
tise on  Truth  as  distinguished  from  Revelation,  then  for  the 
first  time  advocated  mere  natural  religion  as  alone  sufficient 
and  absolute,  while  in  his  Religion  of  the  Gentiles  he  even 
anticipated  the  problems  of  the  latest  comparative  theology, 
by  attempting  to  separate  the  essential  truths  common  to 
Heathenism  and  Christianity.  Spinoza,  the  father  of  modern 
pantheism,  probed  that  metaphysical  question  of  the  imma- 
nence of  God  in  the  world,  which  the  profoundest  thought 
since  then  has  been  pursuing.  Descartes,  renewing  the  onto- 
logical   theism    of   Augustine   and   Anselm,   with   his   terse 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Theology.  235 

formula  "I  think  God,  therefore  God  is,"  reasoned  from  the 
conception  to  the  existence  of  a  perfect  being,  the  very  idea 
of  whom,  hke  that  of  a  triangle,  must  involve  the  reality;  and 
thus  opened  the  path  pursued  by  Samuel  Clark,  Mendelssohn 
and  Cousin.  Christian  Wolf,  renewing  the  cosmological  the- 
ism of  Diodorus  and  Hugh  St.  Victor,  in  his  Rational  The- 
ology, argued  from  the  dependence  of  the  world  as  a  contin- 
gent effect  to  the  necessity  of  a  God  as  its  only  sufficient  rea- 
son and  cause ;  and  thus  prepared  the  way  for  Bilfinger, 
Baumgarten  and  Meier.  Derham,  renewing  the  teleological 
theism  of  Athanasias  and  Aquinas,  in  his  Physico-theology, 
collected  from  the  existing  natural  sciences  those  evidences  of 
design  in  nature,  of  the  Power,  Wisdom  and  Goodness  of  the 
Creator,  which  were  to  be  more  fully  unfolded  by  the  Boyle 
lecturers  and  the  Bridgewater  essayists.  Crusius,  renewing 
the  moral  theism  of  TertuUian  and  Raimond,  in  his  Guide  to 
a  Reasonable  Life,  deduced  from  the  natural  conscience  those 
proofs  of  a  spiritual  Lawgiver  and  Judge,  which  have  since 
been  elaborated  by  Kant,  Fichte  and  Hamilton.  At  length 
Bishop  Butler,  assuming  a  demonstrated  theism  from  these 
combined  arguments,  proceeded  in  his  Analogy,  by  a  course 
of  inductive  logic,  to  lay  a  foundation  in  the  mental  and  moral 
sciences  for  those  remaining  articles  of  essential  religion,  the 
Divine  Government,  natural  and  moral,  the  Future  State  of 
Rewards  and  Punishments,  and  the  Present  State  of  Proba- 
tion and  Discipline,  which  had  been  systematized  by  Toland, 
Morgan  and  Tindall.  Since  then,  too,  that  Catholic  deism  of 
Justin  Martyr  and  Savonarola,  which  was  to  be  derived  from 
the  consent  of  nations,  from  the  internal  coalescence  of  reli- 
gions, has  begun  to  find  more  or  less  avowed  promoters  in 
the  travellers,  missionaries,  antiquarians,  mythologists,  philolo- 
gists and  historians,  who  have  been  bringing  Christianity  into 
connection  with  the  Judaism,  Hellenism  and  Mohamedanism 
of  the  ancient  world,  as  well  as  the  Brahminism,  Budhism  and 
Polytheism  of  the  present  day.  And  thus  the  materials  have 
been  collected  for  a  new  science  of  religion,  treated  as  a  uni- 
versal human  phenomenon,  regulated  by  psychical  and  social 
laws. 

Connected  with  these   investigations,  however,  there  also 


236  The  Schism  in  Theology.  [part  i. 

appeared  in  the  second  divergent  stage  numerous  hypotheses, 
scarcely  scientific  as  yet,  concerning  the  origin,  the  develop- 
ment and  the  destiny  of  religion,  of  natural  or  essential  reli- 
gion, as  manifested  in  the  individual  and  in  society.  As  to 
the  first  of  these  problems,  the  origin  of  religion,  there 
were  the  two  opposite  schools  of  naturalism  and  super- 
naturalism,  of  rationalism  and  scripturalism.  According 
to  the  latter,  all  real  religion  is  supernatural  and  revealed. 
And  it  had  been  so  held  from  the  beginning.  The  Greek 
apologists,  Justin  Martyr  and  Clement,  had  described  any 
kindred  truths  of  heathenism  as  but  the  germs  of  the 
Christian  Logos,  and  styled  Plato  himself  a  mere  Hebrew 
philosopher,  who  had  borrowed  his  teachings  from  the  Old 
Testament.  The  Latin  apologists,  Tertullian  and  Minucius 
Felix,  had  denounced  the  myths  and  oracles  of  paganism  as 
Satanic  mimicries,  and  claimed  that  its  counterfeit  doctrines 
could  only  suggest  either  that  the  Christians  were  philoso- 
phers or  that  the  philosophers  had  been  Christians.  In  the 
middle  ages,  also,  the  Mohammedan  and  Scandinavian  reli- 
gions had  been  treated  as  mere  diabolic  or  human  inventions, 
to  be  destroyed  rather  than  converted.  And  though  scholas- 
tic doctors,  such  as  Anselm  and  Aquinas,  had  begun  to  frame 
the  great  theistic  argument,  since  so  famous,  yet  it  was  only 
as  corroborative  of  a  revealed  divinity,  which  was  held  to  be 
beyond  the  reach  of  unaided  reason.  But  since  the  Reforma- 
tion the  rise  of  deism,  as  an  independent  religion  of  nature, 
has  provoked  anew  at  the  centre  of  Christendom  the  battles 
which  the  early  Church  once  waged  on  the  confines  of  heathen- 
dom, and  various  attempts  have  been  made  to  reclaim  and  ex> 
plain  the  religious  tenets  which  had  been  captured,  as  it  were, 
from  Christianity. 

As  a  first  class  of  proofs,  it  was  urged  that  a  spiritual 
revelation  of  religion  is  necessary  and  important.  Dr.  Haly- 
burton  of  St.  Andrew's,  in  an  elaborate  work  entitled  Natural 
Religion  Insufficient  and  Revealed  Necessary,  argued  against 
Herbert  that  the  light  of  nature  is  wholly  defective  as  to  the 
being  of  a  God,  a  rule  of  duty  and  a  future  state,  and  that  the 
five  articles  of  the  supposed  absolute  and  universal  religion  do 
not,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  obtain  beyond  the  pale  of  the  Chris- 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Theology.  237 

tian  revelation  among  heathen  nations.  Bishop  Conybcarc, 
in  a  similar  Defence  of  Revealed  Religion  against  Tindall, 
maintained  that  the  true  religion  of  nature  is  not  derivable 
from  reason  alone,  even  by  the  wisest  men ;  that  if  perfected, 
it  could  not  solve  the  most  essential  questions  of  all  religion, 
such  as  the  pardon  of  sin,  the  means  of  reformation  and  the 
awards  of  futurity;  that  what  little  truth  it  contains  needs  to 
be  confirmed  and  completed  by  a  supernatural  revelation ; 
and  that  the  known  miraculous  and  prophetical  proofs  of  such 
a  revelation  are  more  obvious  to  common  minds  than  the 
most  elaborate  reasonings  of  deists  and  philosophers.  Chap- 
man, in  a  treatise  styled  Eusebius,  replied  to  Morgan,  that 
the  peculiar  truths  of  a  revealed  religion  cannot  be  tested  by 
our  mere  rational  and  moral  faculties ;  that  miracles  and  pro- 
phecies are  the  proper  proofs  of  such  a  religion ;  that  the 
Jewish  and  Christian  Scriptures  have  come  down  to  us  amply 
sustained  by  such  kind  of  evidence ;  and  that  the  attempt  to 
extract  from  them  a  Christian  deism  conformable  to  reason 
and  the  fitness  of  things,  by  sacrificing  the  Old  Testament  and 
modifying  the  New,  is  simply  subversive  of  all  religion,  both 
natural  and  revealed.  Dr.  Leland  of  Dublin,  besides  his  spe- 
cial replies  to  Tindall  and  Morgan  and  his  View  of  Deistical 
Writers  and  their  opponents,  completed  his  labors  with  a 
learned  treatise  on  the  Advantage  and  Necessity  of  the  Chris- 
tian Revelation,  as  evinced  by  the  state  of  the  ancient  heathen 
world.  At  length  Bishop  Butler,  in  the  second  part  of  his 
Analogy,  condensed  and  arranged  all  the  arguments  of  his 
predecessors  in  one  compact  course  of  reasoning,  repelling 
every  conceivable  objection  to  revealed  religion,  and  estab- 
lishing it  in  harmony  with  the  general  scheme  of  nature  and 
Providence.  And  since  that  time  little  of  value  in  the  same 
vein  has  been  added  by  any  English  or  German  writer,  unless 
it  be  the  argument  of  Chalmers,  that  Natural  Theology,  as  its 
last  word,  still  calls  for  a  revelation. 

As  another  class  of  proofs,  corroborative  of  the  former 
class,  it  has  been  urged  that  all  natural  religions  are  them- 
selves traceable  to  the  Jewish  and  Christian  revelation.  The 
learned  Theophilus  Gale,  in  his  work,  The  Court  of  the  Gen- 
tiles, thus   essayed,  by  ingenious  historical   and  philological 


238  The  Schism  in  Theology.  [parti. 

parallelisms,  to  refer  the  whole  Grecian  and  Roman  religion 
and  philosophy  to  the  Word  of  God,  as  mere  borrowed  light 
from  that  sacred  fire,  Cudworth  even  sought  for  traces  of 
the  Trinity  in  Platonism.  Against  the  early  deists,  also,  it 
was  held  that  their  so-called  natural  religion  had  been  uncon- 
sciously derived  by  them  from  the  Christian  Scriptures,  since 
it  could  not  be  found  either  in  ancient  or  modern  heathenism, 
being  somewhat  like  the  fiction  of  the  social  contract  which 
can  be  traced  in  no  existing  government.  And  more  recently, 
with  our  growing  knowledge  of  the  other  extant  religions  of 
the  world,  eager  apologists  have  been  striving  to  explain 
them,  as  mere  counterfeits  or  corruptions  of  Judaism  and 
Christianity.  The  school  of  TertuUian  has  been  revived  by 
writers,  such  as  Morris  and  Holsam,  who  would  maintain, 
against  learned  and  philosophical  Hindoos,  that  the  mon- 
strous triads,  avatars  and  human  sacrifices  of  Brahminism  are 
but  infernal  parodies  of  the  trinity,  the  incarnation,  and  the 
atonement,  or  distorted  fragments  of  primeval  prophecies, 
and  that  the  grosser  rites  of  polytheism  are,  as  they  claim  to 
be,  mere  devil-worship  and  sorcery.  In  distinction  from  such 
views,  however,  the  late  Archdeacon  Hardwicke,  Christian 
Advocate  in  the  University  of  Cambridge,  in  his  thoughtful 
treatise,  Christ  and  other  Masters,  after  proving  the  unity  of 
the  human  race  and  the  prophetical  character  of  Hebraism,  as 
contrasted  with  Brahminism,  Budhism  and  Polytheism,  has 
endeavored  to  show  that  any  real  correspondences  between 
Christianity  and  those  religions,  such  as  the  facts  of  the  fall, 
the  deluge,  the  rite  of  sacrifice,  may  be  referred  to  floating 
traditions,  borne  away  in  the  great  primeval  migrations  to 
Asia,  America  and  Africa,  whilst  the  apparent  doctrinal  cor- 
respondences above  mentioned  are  due  to  international  inter- 
course at  later  periods.  The  distinguished  orientalist,  Abel- 
Remusat,  maintained  that  Budhism  in  Thibet  had  been  so 
modified  by  the  Nestorian  missionaries  and  early  European 
travelers,  that  it  might  almost  be  termed  the  Christianity  of 
the  East.  The  Abbe  Hue  and  Rev.  Samuel  Beale  have  ex- 
plained the  same  coincidences  in  like  manner.  Other  writers, 
with  Frederick  Schlegel,  have  sought  traces  of  a  much  earlier 
and  more  general  connection.     Henry  Liicken,  Roman  Catho- 


CHAP.  III.]        .  Scientific  Theology.  239 

lie  Professor  at  Miinster,  in  an  elaborate  work  on  the  Tradi- 
tions of  the  Human  Race,  has  gathered  evidences  of  a  prime- 
val revelation,  from  all  ancient  and  modern  nations  and  tribes, 
as  afforded  in  their  legends  of  the  fall  and  the  deluge,  and  in 
Messianic  presages  of  the  coming  of  Christ  and  the  end  of  the 
world.  Ernest  Von  Bunsen,  in  his  Unity  of  Religions,  de- 
scribed it  as  a  secret  tradition,  preserved  by  all  peoples  in 
their  migrations.  Professor  Moffat,  in  his  Comparative  History 
of  Religions,  has  also  proposed  to  connect  the  great  systems 
of  India,  China  and  Persia  with  an  aboriginal  revelation,  the 
patriarchal  monotheism  of  Noah,  from  which  they  have  been 
departing  through  various  revolutions,  whilst  Judaism  and 
Christianity  have  retained  and  completed  it.  The  Jesuits  thus 
sought  to  trace  the  ancient  wisdom  of  the  Chinese  to  the  pa- 
triarchs of  Scripture.  Living  Protestant  missionaries  in  dif- 
ferent fields  are  also  seeking  for  such  traditions  as  part  of 
their  aggressive  work  against  heathenism.  And  a  similar 
apologetic  has  been  attempted  by  the  late  Bishop  Meade  of 
Virginia,  in  a  popular  volume  entitled  The  Bible  and  the 
Classics,  with  the  view  of  counteracting  the  pagan  tendencies 
of  Greek  and  Latin  literature  in  schools  and  colleges. 

But  as  a  conclusive  class  of  proofs,  including  yet  transcend- 
ing the  other  two  classes,  it  is  now  urged  that  all  religions 
spring  from  a  universal  revelation  which,  in  Christianity  alone, 
is  matured  and  completed.  That  Judaism  was  thus  resumed 
in  Christianity  has  always  been  the  orthodox  belief;  that 
natural  religion  is  but  an  essential  part  of  revealed,  was  the 
standing  reply  to  the  English  deists  ;  and  the  school  of  Justin 
Martyr  seems  to  be  re-appearing,  with  reference  to  a  similar 
divine  origin  of  ancient  and  modern  heathenism.  The  first 
step  may  have  been  unconsciously  taken  by  classical  scholars, 
such  as  Nagelsbach,  Liibker  and  Tyler,  who  have  developed 
the  theology  of  Homer,  Euripides  and  Sophocles,  or  such  as 
Ackerman,  Baur  and  Tayler  Lewis,  who  have  discriminated 
the  Christian  elements  in  Socrates,  Plato  and  Tacitus.  And 
with  the  growth  of  a  more  philanthropic  spirit  or  a  pantheistic 
conception  of  humanity,  it  has  not  been  strange  that  such 
fragmentary  truths,  in  the  purer  pagan  literature,  should  have 
been  hailed  as  refracted  rays  or  scintillations  of  that  Divine 


240  TJie  Schisju  i)i  Theology.  [part  i. 

Word,  which  shines  fully  in  Christ  alone,  yet  lighteth  every 
man  that  cometh  into  the  world.  Upon  some  such  general 
principle  Schneider,  in  his  Christian  Chimes  from  the  Grecian 
and  Roman  Classics,  after  citing  the  apostles,  fathers  and  re- 
formers to  prove  his  position,  has  compiled  and  arranged  an 
immense  variety  of  heathen  maxims  and  Scripture  texts,  as  in 
a  sort  of  concordant  catechism,  including  every  article  of 
faith.  Mr.  Gladstone,  also,  in  his  scholarly  treatise  on  Homer 
and  the  Homeric  Age,  argues  that  Greek  mythology  is  not  so 
much  a  deification  of  the  powers  of  nature,  as  a  corruption  of 
old  theistic  and  Messianic  traditions.  The  late  Bishop 
Trench,  in  his  Hulsean  lectures,  entitled  Christ  the  De- 
sire of  all  Nations,  has  depicted,  in  a  striking  light,  the 
unconscious  prophecies  or  instinctive  yearnings  of  the  whole 
heathen  world  toward  some  Great  Deliverer  from  sin. 
Vanquisher  of  death,  Prophet,  Sacrifice  and  Founder  of  a 
new  spiritual  kingdom.  Dr.  Dorner,  in  his  profound  and 
erudite  History  of  the  Person  of  Christ,  has  shown  that  the 
universal  idea  of  a  God-man,  that  pervades  all  religions,  could 
not  be  realized  in  Budhism,  which  humanized  God,  nor  in 
Hellenism,  which  deified  man,  nor  in  Judaism,  which 
sought  a  political  Messiah,  nor  in  Alexandrian  Platonism, 
which  dreamed  of  an  impersonal  Logos,  but  only  in  Christ, 
the  Incarnate  Word,  as  defined  in  the  Gospels  and  subse- 
quently unfolded  through  the  stages  of  dogmatic  history. 
And  Professor  Edmund  Spiess  of  Jena,  whose  Logos  Sperma- 
ticos  is  a  learned  collation  of  parallel  passages  from  the  Gre- 
cian and  New  Testament  writings,  has  maintained,  in  a  sug- 
gestive memoir  before  the  Evangelical  Alliance,  that  the  con- 
sensus of  Christianity  with  other  religions  includes,  as  germs 
of  the  divine  word,  certain  essential  truths  common  to  them 
all,  such  as  the  fall  of  man  and  future  awards,  while  its  dissen- 
sus  from  them  reserves  the  great  doctrine  of  the  atonement  as 
the  proper  theme  of  its  own  sjoecial  revelation.  It  thus  appears 
that,  by  orthodox  writers,  all  religion  is  supposed,  in  some 
form  or  degree,  to  be  revealed. 

According  to  the  rationalists,  however,  all  religion  is  purely 
natural  and  rational  in  its  origin.  And  this  opinion  was  also 
of  ancient  growt-h.     The  early  infidels,  Celsus  and  Porphyry, 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific   Theology.  241 

had  been  fain  to  reclaim  Christian  doctrine  as  but  the  true 
Logos  of  Plato,  and  supersede  the  Hebrew  prophecies  with 
heathen  oracles.  The  later  infidels,  Hierocles  and  Julian,  had 
even  matched  the  miracles  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  with  the  feats 
of  Apollonius  of  Tyanna,  and  striven  to  supplant  the  severe 
graces  of  the  new  religion  with  the  romantic  charms  of  the 
old  mythology.  And  though  all  feeling  for  any  form  of 
heathenism  disappeared  during  the  mediaeval  conflicts  with 
the  Goth  and  the  Saracen,  yet,  on  the  decline  of  the  Cru- 
sades and  with  the  classical  revival,  came  the  schools  of  Boc- 
cacio  and  Erasmus,  identifying  heathen  gods  and  goddesses 
with  the  Trinity,  the  Virgin  and  the  angels,  and  praising  Gre- 
cian poets  and  philosophers  at  the  expense  of  Christian  doc- 
tors and  saints.  The  former  likened  the  three  great  religions, 
Judaism,  Christianity  and  Mahometanism,  to  three  rings,  so 
much  alike  that  the  genuine  could  not  be  distinguished  from 
the  copies.  And  even  among  the  reformers,  Luther  expressed 
pious  hopes  for  the  salvation  of  Cicero,  and  Zwingle  incurred 
censure  for  his  unguarded  praise  of  heathen  moralists  and 
sages.  Early  in  the  seventeenth  century,  Tobias  Pfannerus 
wrote  a  learned  treatise  on  The  Purer  Gentile  Theology,  in 
which  he  labored  to  show  how  nearly  ancient  pagans,  by  the 
light  of  reason  and  tradition,  had  approached  the  true  religion 
in  each  of  its  most  peculiar  dogmas,  and  concluded  with  an 
essay  on  the  salvability  of  the  heathen.  But  it  was  not  until 
Protestantism  had  been  perverted  into  free-thinking,  that  such 
comparisons  were  undertaken  in  an  unchristian  spirit,  and 
open  efforts  were  made  to  recover  the  lost  battles  of  the  early 
pagan  scepticism  with  the  Christian  faith. 

At  the  outset  of  this  great  re-action,  it  was  simply  at- 
tempted to  reduce  Christianity  to  mere  natural  religion. 
Lord  Herbert  began  the  movement  by  compiling  a  Religion 
of  the  Laity  and  of  the  Nations,  which  would  exclude  every 
distinctive  Christian  tenet,  but  the  existence  of  a  God,  the 
duty  of  worship,  the  claims  of  virtue,  the  efficacy  of  repent- 
ance, and  the  motive  of  rewards  and  punishments.  John  To- 
land  of  Ulster,  a  Catholic,  a  Protestant,  a  Dissenter,  at  length 
a  Pantheist,  in  his  Christianity  not  Mysterious,  provoked  more 
than  fifty  replies,  by  maintaining  that  revealed  truths  are 
2F 


242  Tlic  Schism  in  Theology.  [part  i. 

neither  contrary  to  reason,  nor  above  it,  but,  when  once  made 
known,  as  intelhgible  and  plain  as  any  other  truths  naturally 
within  the  reach  of  our  faculties.  Dr.  Mathew  Tindall,  Law- 
fellow  at  Oxford  and  Judge-ecclesiastical  in  London,  near  the 
close  of  his  life  published  his  "  Christianity  as  old  as  the  Crea- 
tion," in  which  he  argued  that  natural  religion,  or  the  law  of 
nature,  is  absolutely  perfect  and  obvious  to  the  conscience  of 
all  men,  that  it  neither  requires  nor  admits  of  an  external 
revelation  to  explain  and  enforce  it,  and  that  the  pretended 
Jewish  and  Christian  revelations  are  defective  in  their  evi- 
dences, obscure  in  their  statements,  immoral  in  their  teach- 
ings, and  without  the  universality  and  force  which  belong  to 
the  religion  of  nature.  At  length  Morgan  completed  the  at- 
tack of  Tindall  upon  the  internal  distinctive  truths  of  Christi- 
anity, as  Collins  and  Woolston  had  already  assailed  its  exter- 
nal prophetical  and  miraculous  evidences.  And  the  system 
thus  elaborated  was  only  reproduced,  more  or  less  fully,  with 
French  wit  by  Voltaire  and  Rousseau,  in  the  Encyclopaedia  ; 
with  German  culture  by  Reimarus  and  Lessing,  in  the  Wol- 
fenbiittel  fragments;  and  with  New  England  seriousness,  by 
Channing  and  Dewey,  in  the  form  of  Unitarianism. 

It  was  next  attempted  to  merge  Christianity  among  the 
other  religions  of  the  heathen  world.  Sir  Charles  Blount, 
a  disciple  of  Hierocles  and  of  Herbert,  at  the  close  of  the  sev- 
enteenth century,  republished  the  Life  of  Apollonius,  the 
fabulous  miracle-worker  of  Tyanna,  with  the  view  of  involving 
Christianity  in  the  dark  suspicions  which  rested  upon  ancient 
paganism.  In  the  same  spirit,  Dupuis  and  Volney,  at  the 
close  of  the  last  century,  in  their  work  upon  the  origin  of 
cults  and  the  revolutions  of  empires,  dared  to  rank  Christ  with 
Hercules  and  Adonis,  and  to  class  Judaism  and  Christianity, 
with  other  ancient  religions,  as  mere  inventions  of  priestcraft, 
or  varieties  of  the  universal  worship  of  nature.  Since  Vol- 
taire sneered  at  the  supposed  resemblance  between  the  Hin- 
doo triad  and  the  Christian  trinity,  sceptical  travelers,  anti- 
quarians and  linguists,  such  as  Holwel,  Lubbock  and  Bur- 
nouf,  have  insinuated  that  the  Hebrew  monotheism,  ritual  and 
angelology  were  largely  borrowed  from  the  neighboring  sys- 
tems of  India,  Egypt  and  Persia,  as  by  a  like  international 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific   Theology.  243 

commerce  of  religions  mediaeval  Christianity  now  appears  in 
the  Lamaism  of  Thibet,  even  to  the  use  of  the  cross,  rosary, 
holy  water,  vestments,  litanies  and  processions.  And  while 
non-Christian  writers  have  thus  been  aiming  to  make  revealed 
religion  equally  false  with  all  natural  religions,  as  being  alike 
with  them  a  mere  relic  of  primeval  barbaric  superstition,  some 
unwary  apologists  and  comparative  theologians,  of  the  liberal 
school,  have  been  representing  it  as  only  equally  true,  or  at 
least  magnifying  its  consent  with  them,  rather  than  its  dissent 
from  them.  Wolf  and  Priestly  thus  suffered  a  double  miscon- 
ception for  having  too  favorably  compared  Confucius  and  So- 
crates with  Christ.  Creuzer,  in  his  great  classical  work  on  the 
mythology  of  all  nations,  whilst  admitting  that  among  known 
religions  the  Christian  is  best  adapted  to  the  moral  nature  of 
man,  yet  maintained  that  it  owes  its  superiority,  in  doctrine 
and  worship,  to  their  preparatory  ministry.  The  late  Pro- 
fessor F.  D.  Maurice,  in  his  Boyle  Lectures  on  the  Religions 
of  the  World,  after  distinguishing  their  characteristic  doc- 
trines, dwells  upon  the  Mohamedan,  Brahminical  and  Bud- 
hist  sides  of  Christianity  as  being  fraught  with  danger  or  bene- 
fit, according  as  they  are  repressed  and  exaggerated,  or  kept  in 
their  due  proportions  and  relations.  Dr.  James  Freeman 
Clarke,  in  his  examination  of  the  Ten  Great  Religions,  whilst 
assigning  to  each  of  them  some  vital  truth  and  Providential 
warrant,  such  as  spirituality  to  Brahmanism,  morality  to  Con- 
fucianism, penitence  to  Boodhism,  simply  maintains  that,  since 
they  are  ethnic,  partial  and  arrested  growths,  Christianity 
alone  is  catholic,  complete  and  progressive,  fitted  to  super- 
sede them  as  the  religion  of  the  whole  human  race.  The  late 
Theodore  Parker,  advancing  more  boldly,  in  his  Discourses 
on  Religion,  classed  Christianity  with  the  different  forms  of 
Fetichism,  Polytheism  and  Monotheism,  as  only  the  highest 
extant  phase  of  an  absolute  religion,  pervading  all  ages  and 
countries,  and  embracing  a  paradise  into  which  the  swarthy 
Indian,  the  grim-faced  Calmuck,  the  Grecian  peasant,  shall 
come  from  the  East  and  West,  to  sit  down  with  I\Ioses  and 
Zoroaster,  with  Socrates  and  Christ. 

But  the  final  effort  has  been  to  derive  all   religion,  includ- 
ing Christianity,  from  the  mere  reason  of  man.     That  ancient 


244  T^Ji^  Schism  in  Theology.  [part  i. 

and  modern  heathenism  thus  originated  had  long  been  the 
general  belief;  that  natural  or  essential  religion  is  discovera- 
ble by  mere  reason,  without  the  aid  of  a  revelation,  was  but 
the  peculiar  boast  of  the  English  deists ;  and  the  school  of 
Celsus  and  Porphyry  would  seem  to  have  returned,  as  respects 
a  like  human  origin  of  Judaism  and  Christianity.  The  way 
was  incautiously  opened  by  such  devout  philosophers  as  Wolf, 
Locke  and  Kant,  striving  to  demonstrate  the  dogmas  of  re- 
vealed theology,  to  prove  the  reasonableness  of  Christianity, 
and  to  confine  religion  as  mere  morality,  within  the  bounds 
of  pure  reason ;  by  such  philosophic  divines  as  Schleierma- 
cher,  Wegscheider  and  De  Wette ;  and  still  further,  by  such 
daring  thinkers  as  Hegel,  Schelling  and  Fichte,  in  their 
philosophies  of  religion,  of  revelation  and  of  mythology. 
And  it  only  remained,  by  combining  the  speculative  spirit  with 
critical  research,  to  separate  the  mythical  from  the  historical 
element  in  sacred  as  well  as  classical  antiquity,  and  exhibit 
Jehovah  as  but  an  Israelitish  Jupiter,  Samson  as  but  a  Hebrew 
Hercules,  Jesus  as  only  a  Jewish  Socrates,  and  Christianity 
itself  as  mere  mythology.  David  Frederick  Strauss,  in  his 
celebrated  Life  of  Christ,  after  maintaining  the  possibility  of 
myths  in  the  New  Testament,  discriminating  between  their 
philosophical  and  historical  marks,  and  giving  rules  for  de- 
tecting them,  proceeded  to  rally  all  previous  English,  French 
and  German  skepticism  against  the  literal  truth  of  the  gospel 
histories,  with  the  view  of  resolving  them  into  pious  creations 
of  the  evangelists,  which  they  had  artlessly  woven  out  of  a 
few  extraordinary  facts,  combined  with  Messianic  traditions. 
Bruno  Bauer,  rebounding  from  the  orthodox  to  the  infi- 
del side  of  Hegelianism,  then  completed  the  destructive  criti- 
cism of  Strauss,  in  the  Synoptical  Gospels,  by  assailing  them 
as  conscious  inventions  of  their  authors,  mere  dogmatic  after- 
thoughts, which  they  had  engrafted  upon  the  original  narra- 
tive of  St.  Mark.  Meanwhile,  Ferdinand  Christian  Baur, 
leader  of  the  Tubingen  school,  by  a  more  subtle  dissection  of 
the  Acts  and  Epistles  of  the  Apostles,  essayed  to  trace  the 
Christianity  of  the  First  Three  Centuries,  from  its  early  Jew- 
ish and  Gentile  phases  in  the  rival  schools  of  Peter  and  Paul, 
to  their  coalescence  in  the  Council  of  Nice,  together  with  the 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Theology.  245 

subsequent  development  of  the  Trinity,  the  Incarnation  and 
the  Atonement,  through  successive  stages  of  dogmatic  his- 
tory, into  the  forms  of  the  Hegehan  dialectic.  At  length 
Ludwig  Feuerbach,  assailing  the  dogmatic  as  well  as  historic 
faith,  retained  in  his  "Essence  of  Christianity"  nothing  but  the 
idea  of  God  as  a  mere  abstraction  of  the  understanding  or 
personification  of  humanity,  evaporated  theology  into  anthro- 
pology, and  reduced  piety  itself  to  mere  hallucination.  And 
thus,  by  the  extreme  rationalists,  all  religion  would  be  ren- 
dered purely  mythical  and  illusive. 

As  to  the  second  problem,  the  history  or  development  of 
religion,  there  were  also  two  rival  schools,  the  one  referring  it 
to  Providential  dispensations  and  interpositions,  the  other  to 
mere  mental  and  social  laws.  According  to  the  former,  reli- 
gion advances  in  history  by  a  series  of  miraculous  economies, 
messengers,  incarnations,  revelations.  Many  of  the  early 
Christians,  especially  the  Montanist  fathers,  Ignatius  and  Ter- 
tullian,  and  also  Lactantius,  held  that  as  Heathenism  and  Ju- 
daism had  been  superseded  by  Christianity,  so  Christianity 
itself  was  about  to  be  superseded  by  a  more  complete  apoca- 
lypse with  a  Second  Advent  of  Christ,  General  Resurrection 
and  Judgment  of  the  world,  and  reign  of  the  risen  saints  upon 
earth  for  a  thousand  years.  The  same  Millenarian  view  was 
revived  in  the  thirteenth  century  by  the  Fratricelli,  or  advo- 
cates of  the  so-called  "Eternal  Gospel,"  such  as  Joachim. 
Amaury  and  John  of  Parma,  who  contended  that  Judaism  was 
the  dispensation  of  the  Father,  Christianity  that  of  the  Son, 
and  a  new  approaching  dynasty  that  of  the  Holy  Spirit ;  the 
first  heralded  by  the  twelve  sons  of  Jacob,  the  second  by  the 
twelve  apostles  of  Christ,  and  the  third  by  the  twelve  angels 
of  the  heavenly  city.  According  to  Postel,  such  successive 
economies  are  connected  with  four  distinct  incarnations  or 
births  of  Christ,  first  in  the  divine  nature  as  the  Son  of  God, 
then  in  Adam  as  the  head  of  the  human  race,  at  length  in  the 
Virgin  Mary  as  the  founder  of  a  new  spiritual  kingdom,  and 
at  last  in  the  resurrection  as  the  Redeemer  of  both  man  and 
nature.  At  a  later  period  similar  views,  but  in  a  more  chime- 
rical form,  were  associated  with  the  occult  sciences  by  the 
Rosicrucians,  Paracelsus,  Boehme  and  Fludd,  who  represented 


246  The  ScJiisui  in  Theology.  [part  i. 

Christianity  and  Mahometanism  as  destined  soon  to  give  place 
to  a  new  religion,  whose  followers  would  enjoy  perpetual 
}-outh,  immortality  and  magical,  physical  powers.  After  the 
reformation,  in  connection  with  the  political  ferments  of  the 
time,  the  same  opinions  were  advocated,  in  a  still  more  practi- 
cal manner,  by  the  Anabaptists  in  Germany,  and  conspicu- 
ously by  the  Fifth  Monarchists  of  the  English  Revolution, 
who  believed  that  the  four  great  antichristian  monarchies  pro- 
jected by  Daniel  in  history,  the  Bab}'lonian,  Persian,  Grecian 
and  Roman,  were  about  to  be  succeeded  by  the  return  of 
Christ  and  reign  of  the  saints  in  a  theocracy  forcibly  estab- 
lished upon  the  ruins  of  all  earthly  kingdoms.  And  at  length, 
in  recent  times,  such  speculations  have  been  recast,  with  more 
or  less  scientific  pretension,  as  a  theory  of  universal  religion. 

In  this  way  are  explained  the  relations  of  Christianity 
to  ancient  and  modern  Heathenism.  The  early  ecclesiastic 
historitins,  such  as  Bossuet,  Prideaux  and  Schuckford,  as  we 
have  seen,  endeavored  to  connect  all  sacred  and  profane  his- 
tory together  in  one  world-wide  scheme  of  divine  dispensa- 
tions for  the  destruction  of  the  false  religions  of  the  heathen 
world,  and  the  vindication  of  the  one  true  religion  revealed  in 
the  Jewish  and  Christian  Church.  Jonathan  Edwards,  in  the 
same  spirit,  but  with  more  dogmatic  precision,  sketched  a 
History  of  the  Work  of  Redemption  as  devised  among  the  sa- 
cred persons  of  the  Trinity  and  executed  in  human  history  by 
vast  providential  economies,  extending  from  the  fall  of  man  to 
the  incarnation  of  Christ  and  the  end  of  the  world,  and  in- 
\^olving  the  overthrow  of  heathenism,  in  its  modern  as  well  as 
ancient  forms,  by  means  of  special  interpositions  and  super- 
natural judgments.  Learned  interpreters  of  prophecy,  such 
as  Mede,  Lowth  and  Keith,  have  regarded  the  four  beasts  in 
the  book  of  Daniel  as  denoting  the  great  pagan  powers  of 
Assyria,  Persia,  Greece  and  Rome,  which  have  been  suc- 
cessively subverted  by  Divine  Providence  in  order  to  make  way 
for  the  universal  monarchy  of  Messiah  at  the  end  of  the  present 
dispensation.  Consistently  with  such  views  the  great  enter- 
prise of  foreign  missions  has  been  organized  as  a  moral  crusade 
against  the  modern  anti-Christian  systems  of  Brahminism, 
Budhism  and  Polytheism;  while  the  whole  Millennarian  school 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Theology.  247 

of  our  day  attach  no  higher  importance  to  the  work  than  as  a 
vindicatory  proclamation  of  the  gospel  against  surviving  Gen- 
tile religions  which  are  so  utterly  false  that  they  can  neither 
be  reformed  nor  converted,  but  must  be  simply  destroyed  at 
the  ever-imminent  coming  of  Christ  in  judgment. 

In  the  same  manner  have  been  explained  the  relations  of 
Christianity  to  ancient  and  modern  Judaism.  While  it  has 
ever  been  the  orthodox  belief  that  the  Old  Testament  has  been 
fulfilled  in  the  New,  yet  as  to  the  mode  and  extent  of  that  ful- 
fillment there  have  been  different  schools  of  interpretation. 
The  earlier  school  of  Glass,  Cocceius  and  Witsius,  though  dis- 
claiming the  allegories  of  the  fathers,  almost  equalled  them 
by  maintaining  that  everything  in  Judaism  was  typical  of 
something  in  Christianity,  not  merely  the  few  antitypes  men- 
tioned by  the  apostles,  but  the  entire  Jewish  ritual  and  his- 
tory, the  most  trivial  ceremonies  and  incidents.  The  more 
sober  school  of  Macknight,  Marsh  and  Moses  Stuart  admitted 
an  evangelical  import  into  the  Old  Testament  Scriptures  only 
so  far  as  it  has  been  actually  discriminated  and  explained  by 
the  New  Testament  writers,  in  the  instances  which  they  have 
cited  from  the  ritual  and  prophetical  books.  The  German 
school  of  Hengstenberg  and  Olshausen,  together  with  the 
Scottish  school  of  Fairbairn  and  Bonar,  reconstructing  the 
whole  Christology  and  Typology  of  Scripture,  have  looked 
for  the  Gospel  in  the  Pentateuch,  Christ  in  the  Psalms,  and  the 
Church  in  the  Prophets.  And  the  Millcnnarian,  literalistic 
school  of  Bickersteth,  McNeile  and  Judge  Joel  Jones  antici- 
pate a  still  further  and  more  miraculous  fulfillment  of  the  Old 
Testament  in  modern  as  well  as  ancient  Judaism,  by  the  re- 
storation of  the  Jews  to  the  Holy  Land,  the  Second  Advent  of 
Christ  as  their  political  Messiah  and  their  predominance  with 
Him  in  a  theocracy,  to  be  established  at  Mt.  Zion. 

Finally,  this  supernaturalistic  view  has  extended  to  the 
relations  of  ancient  and  modern  Christianity.  Nearly  all  ex- 
isting Churches  strive  to  connect  themselves  with  the  primi- 
tive Church  of  the  apostles,  but  in  different  kinds  and  degrees 
of  relationship.  The  Greek  Church,  claiming  to  be  alone 
apostolic  and  catholic,  treats  both  Romanism  and  Protestantism 
as  heresies,  while  Mohamedanism  is  to  be  anathematized  as 


248  Tlie  Schism  in  Theology.  [part  i. 

the  bastard  Christianity  predicted  under  the  name  of  the  false 
prophet,  the  man  of  sin,  the  anti-Christ.  The  Roman  Church, 
professing  to  have  completed  the  Apostolic  doctrine  with  the 
miracles  and  dogmas  of  her  saints  and  fathers,  denounces  pa- 
ganism as  the  anti-Christ,  or  mystical  Babylon  of  the  Apoca- 
lypse, and  Protestantism  as  an  incidental  apostacy,  like  Ari- 
anism.  The  different  Protestant  Churches,  maintaining  the 
Reformation  to  have  been  a  revival  of  primitive  Christianity, 
have  usually  stigmatized  Catholicism  as  the  anti-Christ,  and 
classed  Mohamedanism  with  Paganism.  It  has,  indeed,  been 
a  cherished  opinion  of  some  large-minded  scholars,  such  as 
Neander,  Ullman  and  Schaff,  that  Catholicism  and  Protestant- 
ism are  to  be  reunited  in  an  ideal  future  Church,  which  will 
complete  a  series  of  divine  dispensations,  foreshadowed  in  the 
apostolic  age,  by  the  respective  characters  of  Peter,  Paul  and 
John.  But  the  more  literalistic  sects  of  Swedenborg,  Irving 
and  Cumming,  regarding  all  existing  forms  of  Christianity  as 
corrupt  or  imperfect,  are  looking  for  the  speedy  establishment 
of  the  New  Jerusalem  of  the  Apocalypse,  with  apostolic  gifts 
and  powers,  the  miraculous  conversion  of  Judaism,  the  vio- 
lent destruction  of  Mohamedanism  and  Paganism,  and  the 
universal  reign  of  Messiah  and  the  saints  on  the  scene  of  a 
renovated  earth.  And  thus  it  has  become,  in  one  form  or 
another,  a  prevailing  conviction,  that  the  history  of  Christianity 
is  a  supernatural  career  of  triumph  over  all  other  religions. 

According  to  the  other  hypothesis,  however,  the  historical 
development  of  religion  is  a  purely  natural  process,  regulated 
by  invariable  laws.  And  it  has  always  found  some  advocates, 
especially  in  times  of  decaying  faith.  The  Egyptians,  and 
after  them  the  Greeks  and  Latins,  were  accustomed  to  asso- 
ciate epochs  of  innocence  and  depravity  with  great  astrono- 
mical periods,  marked  by  terrestrial  catastrophes,  such  as 
universal  deluges  and  conflagrations,  which  had  been  used  by 
the  gods  as  the  means  of  punishing  and  renewing  the  human 
race.  Amid  the  declining  mythologies  of  the  ancient  world, 
it  was  the  infidel  policy  of  Celsus  and  Porphyry  to  confound 
the  Christian  with  the  Platonic  Logos  as  a  purely  rational 
conception,  and  to  class  the  miracles  and  prophecies  with 
heathen  oracles  and  feats  of  magic  as  mere  natural  manifes- 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Theology.  249 

tations  of  human  credulity.  Even  in  the  middle  ages  of  faith, 
bold  thinkers  such  as  Raymond  Lully,  Arnold  of  Villanova, 
and  Roger  Bacon  had  begun  to  anticipate  the  millennium  as  a 
gradual  achievement  of  Providence  through  the  progress  of 
science.  At  the  revival  of  learning  Pomponace,  Cardan  and 
Vanini,  renewing  the  classic  myth  of  the  golden  and  iron 
ages,  endeavored  to  connect  the  rise  and  fall  of  religions  with 
astrological  periods  or  great  sidereal  conjunctions  which  were  at- 
tended, as  they  maintained,  with  prodigies,  prophecies  and  mes-. 
siahs,  producing  universal  consternation  and  faith  only  to  be 
replaced  by  doubt  and  unbelief  as  the  age  of  miracles  passed 
away.  And  though  the  Reformation  brought  with  it  new  super- 
naturahstic  conceptions  of  Christianity,  yet  it  was  not  long  before 
these  began  to  give  place  to  more  scientific  speculations. 

It  was  at  first  attempted  to  refer  a  supposed  natural 
growth  and  decline  of  religion  to  laws  of  political  develop- 
ment. Machiavelli  had  included  epochs  of  religious  credu- 
lity and  infidelity  in  his  vast  social  cycles  of  democracy  and 
monarchy,  simplicity  and  luxury,  probity  and  corruption; 
maintaining  that  Roman  Christianity  itself  was  but  a  repeti- 
tion of  Roman  Polytheism,  and  even  an  enfeebled  repetition, 
because  of  its  enjoined  denial  of  those  passions  of  honor, 
valor  and  ambition  which  had  been  the  impulsive  forces  of 
the  previous  pagan  civilization.  Campanella,  also  associating 
an  increase  and  decrease  of  faith  with  the  rise  and  fall  of 
empire,  represented  all  religions  as  passing  through  grand 
astronomical  cycles  between  the  extremes  of  theocracy  and 
democracy,  papacy  and  atheism,  now  disorganized  by  here- 
sies and  schisms,  then  reorganized  by  new  revelations  and 
dogmas,  as  in  the  successive  conflicts  of  Judaism,  Christi- 
anity, and  Mohammedanism,  and  in  the  alternate  orthodoxies 
and  heresies  of  paganism.  Boullanger  traced  similar  revolu- 
tions from  a  primitive  theocracy  toward  an  ultimate  mon- 
archy or  sovereignty  of  reason.  Vico,  in  a  more  inductive 
spirit,  completed  such  speculations  by  collating  religious 
similarities  in  the  civil  history  of  different  nations,  and  exhi- 
biting Christian  as  well  as  pagan  civilizations  careering 
through  the  same  cycles  of  faith  and  doubt  toward  a  final 
republic  of  piety  and  justice. 

2G 


250  The  Schism  in  Theology.  [part  i. 

It  was  also  attempted,  in  the  same  scientific  spirit,  to  con- 
nect the  history  of  rehgion  with  laws  of  intellectual  develop- 
ment. Turgot,  secularizing  the  universal  history  of  Bossuet, 
had  associated  Christianity  with  the  advancement  of  the 
human  mind ;  and  Condorcet  had  even  sketched  a  career  of 
science  as  gradually  outgrowing  religion.  Hume,  too,  had 
traced  the  natural  history  of  religion,  from  polytheism  to 
monotheism,  under  the  action  of  the  imaginative  and  specu- 
lative faculties  of  mankind.  St.  Simon,  completing  such 
views,  then  connected  the  religious  progress  of  the  race  with 
his  great  intellectual  epochs  of  social  synthesis  and  analysis, 
organization  and  disorganization,  as  seen  at  first  in  ancient 
polytheism  and  infidelity,  and  then  in  modern  Catholicism 
and  Protestantism,  and  about  to  appear  again  in  a  New 
Christianity  of  which  he  announced  himself  as  the  Messiah 
in  a  treatise  dedicated  to  the  Pope.  Buchez,  in  his  Science  of 
History,  endeavored  to  connect  the  social  logic  of  St.  Si- 
mon with  the  successive  revelations  to  Adam,  to  Abraham,  to 
Moses  and  to  Christ  as  completed  by  the  dogmas  of  the  Galli- 
can  Church.  Pierre  Leroux,  with  more  metaphysical  subtlety, 
strove  to  resolve  ancient  Judaism  and  modern  Christianity  into 
St.  Simonism  as  a  sort  of  pantheistic  religion  of  humanity, 
based  upon  social  equality  and  involving  the  perpetual  me- 
tempsychosis of  the  individual  in  the  race.  And  Auguste 
Comte,  as  if  combining  the  ideas  of  his  predecessors  from 
Campanella  to  St.  Simon,  represented  theology  as  emerging 
from  a  primitive  fetichism,  through  the  classic  polytheism, 
into  the  Catholic  monotheism  of  the  middle  ages,  only  then 
to  become  decomposed  by  Protestantism,  Deism,  Atheism, 
and  thus  make  way  for  the  positivist  or  purely  scientific  reli- 
gion of  the  future. 

It  has  still  further  been  attempted  to  subject  Christianity 
itself  to  supposed  laws  of  religious  or  Providential  devel- 
opment. Bishop  Butler,  reasoning  from  the  analogy  of  reli- 
gion and  nature,  long  ago  with  equal  boldness  and  caution, 
had  put  forth  the  magnificent  conjecture,  that  the  whole 
Christian  scheme  from  the  beginning  of  the  world,  with  all 
its  miraculous  phenomena,  in  the  view  of  higher  intelligences, 
may  appear  as  much  a  natural  process  regulated  by  general 


CHAP,  III.]  Scientific  Theology.  251 

laws  as  the  march  of  the  seasons  or  the  history  of  a  flower. 
Lessing,  too,  had  represented  the  successive  revelations  of 
Judaism  and  Christianity  as  only  educating  the  human  race, 
by  developing  in  history  what  existed  potentially  in  the 
reason  of  mankind.  And  Kant,  Fichte  and  Schelling  had 
severally  maintained  that  revealed  religion  is  essentially  iden- 
tical with  rational  religion,  that  its  contents  may  be  rationally 
prejudged  or  criticised  a  priori,  and  that  it  is  itself  only  a 
higher  stage  in  the  development  of  the  mythologies  or  natu- 
ral religions  of  the  world.  Carl  Ludwig  Nitzsch,  on  the 
basis  of  the  Kantian  rationalism,  in  a  treatise  upon  the  "  Dif- 
ference between  an  Authoritative  and  a  Didactive  Revela- 
tion," then  argued  that  the  only  design  of  Christianity  was  to 
awaken  and  enlarge  the  latent  truths  of  natural  religions  by 
means  of  its  prophets  and  apostles.  William  Traugott  Krug, 
also  a  disciple  of  Kant,  and  his  successor  at  Konigsberg,  in 
some  Letters  on  the  Perfectibility  of  Revealed  Religion, 
taking  the  ground  that  a  perfect  or  absolute  religion  could 
not  be  revealed  all  at  once  to  imperfect  and  finite  minds, 
maintained  that  the  object  of  Christ  and  His  apostles  was 
simply  to  premise  the  elements  of  such  a  religion  and  start 
the  race  upon  a  career  towards  it.  Christoph  Von  Ammon, 
court  preacher  at  Dresden,  in  his  work  on  the  "  Development 
of  Christianity  towards  a  Universal  Religion,"  held  that  as 
Christianity  superseded  Judaism  by  a  more  spiritual  system, 
so  each  generation  should  expect  to  advance  beyond  the 
traditions  of  its  predecessor  into  ever  higher  stages  of  reli- 
gious knowledge  and  wisdom.  Hegel  also  taught  that  the 
absolute  religion  contained  in  the  Christian  images  and  doc- 
trines, having  been  dimly  foreseen  in  the  early  Church,  only 
reached  its  full  apprehension  through  the  dialectic  process  of 
his  own  philosophy.  Zeller,  in  a  "  Critical  and  Historical 
Essay  on  the  Perfectibility  of  Christianity,"  has  pointed  out 
the  affinity  of  such  views  with  those  of  the  early  and  mediae- 
val millennarians,  who  looked  for  new  dispensations  and  reve- 
lations, as  well  as  those  of  modern  sociologists,  who  include 
Christianity  with  other  interests  under  great  laws  of  human 
development  and  perfectibility. 

At  length,  by  a  new  school  of  historical  research,  attempts 


252  The  Schism  in  Theology.  [part  i, 

are  made  to  construct  a  so-called  comparative  theology  or  in- 
ductive science  of  religions.  Some  Christian  apologists,  such 
as  Trench,  Maurice,  J.  Freeman  Clarke,  may  have  unknow- 
ingly taken  a  step  in  this  direction  by  exhibiting  ancient  and 
modern  heathenism  as  a  brilliant  though  distorted  and  frag- 
mentary reflection  of  the  peculiar  truths  of  that  Judaism  and 
Christianity  with  which  they  co-existed;  by  exalting  the 
spiritual  affinities  as  well  as  historical  connections  between 
pagan  and  revealed  religions;  and  by  representing  them  as 
conspiring  and  converging  toward  some  absolute  and  uni- 
versal religion  of  the -future.  Professor  Moffat  also,  in  his 
"  Comparative  History  of  Religions,"  though  insisting  upon 
the  revealed  origin  of  Judaism  and  its  supernatural  comple- 
tion in  Christianity,  describes  a  natural  progress  of  all  reli- 
gions by  alternate  revolutions  and  reformations,  as  from  Noa- 
chism  to  Confucianism,  from  Brahminism  to  Budhism,  from 
Catholicism  to  Protestantism.  But  the  honor  of  proposing  a 
distinct  science  of  religions  seems  to  belong  to  Professor  Max 
Miiller,  who  suggested  that  it  should  be  constructed  by  a 
process  like  that  of  comparative  philology,  and  should  in- 
clude Christianity  among  other  religions  as  being  indeed  a 
standard  toward  which  in  various  degrees  they  have  approxi- 
mated and  yet  itself  also  destined  to  decline  and  leave  to 
philosophic  religionists  the  task  of  reconstructing  some  more 
perfect  successor.  The  Westminster  Review,  while  agreeing 
with  the  Oxford  Professor  in  the  main,  doubts  if  the  new 
science  is  to  be  sought  among  the  uncorrupted -teachings  of 
ancient  religions  at  this  mature  age  of  the  world.  M.  Emile 
Burnouf,  in  his  treatise  upon  the  subject,  claims  to  have 
already  founded  such  a  science  of  religions  upon  the  sciences 
of  comparative  ethnology,  philology,  and  archaeology,  main- 
taining that  the  Aryan  races  were  pantheistic,  and  the  Semitic 
races  monotheistic,  that  both  elements  have  commingled  in 
Judaism  and  Christianity,  and  that  all  religious  creeds,  with 
their  issuing  cults,  succeed  each  other  under  fixed  laws  of  dif- 
ferentiation, conflict  and  survival,  by  which  great  orthodoxies 
wax  and  wane  as  inevitably  as  a  germ  grows  and  dies  or  a 
wave  rises  and  falls  in  the  sea. 

As  to  the  third  problem,  the  destiny  of  religion,  two  oppo- 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific   Theology.  2C3 

site  opinions  are  also  emerging.  According  to  one  of  them, 
all  other  religions  are  destined  to  be  supplanted  by  Christianity 
as  the  one  absolute  religion  of  the  future.  The  apostles  them- 
selves proclaimed  it  as  a  gospel  for  Jew  and  Gentile,  for  bar- 
barian as  well  as  Greek  and  Roman ;  and  the  Chiliast  fathers 
looked  for  its  immediate  forcible  triumph  over  the  surround- 
ing paganism  by  a  second  coming  of  Christ  in  judgment.  The 
subsequent  missionary  labors  of  Augustine  in  England,  Boni- 
face in  Germany  and  Siegfried  in  Sweden,  proceeded  more  in 
the  spirit  of  ecclesiastical  propagandism.  It  seems  to  have 
been  the  policy  of  the  imperial  Church,  under  Charlemagne, 
to  conquer  as  well  as  convert  the  Scandinavian  religions  with 
which  it  came  in  conflict,  subduing  them  first  by  warlike 
prowess  and  then  by  spectacular  worship.  The  great  crusades 
of  the  mediaeval  theocracy  were  but  the  effort  of  Europe  to 
supplant  Mahomedanism  by  the  sword.  Roger  Bacon  even 
proposed  to  the  Pope  to  burn  the  cities  of  the  Mussulmans  by 
the  focal  rays  of  incendiary  mirrors.  Raymond  Lully  would 
have  overthrown  them  dialectically  with  his  great  art  of  logic. 
At  a  later  period,  Campanella  revived  the  theocratic  dream  of 
Hildebrand  in  a  treatise  on  universal  papacy,  styled  the 
"  Monarchy  of  Messiah,"  and  endeavored  to  persuade  the  king 
of  Spain  to  begin  a  series  of  wars  for  the  extirpation  of  Pro- 
testantism throughout  Europe,  as  well  as  the  maintenance  of 
Catholicism  by  the  Spanish  conquests  in  America,  Asia  and 
Africa.  But  the  Jesuit  Propaganda  sought  to  repair  the  losses 
of  the  hierarchy  in  a  more  efficient  manner,  with  its  polyglot 
press  and  net-work  of  missions  in  all  parts  of  the  world. 
During  the  present  century,  the  great  Protestant  Churches 
also  have  been  engaging  in  organized  efforts  for  the  universal 
proclamation  of  the  gospel  in  heathen  lands.  And  at  length 
such  aims,  with  the  growth  of  commerce,  diplomacy  and 
philanthropy,  have  begun  to  assume  a  color  of  scientific  pre- 
vision as  well  as  of  practical  success. 

The  triumph  of  Christianity  over  the  different  forms  of  mod- 
ern heathenism  is  already  thus  anticipated  as  an  event  in  the 
near  future.  It  is  argued  that  the  Christian  religion,  as 
now  maintained  by  the  leading  nations  of  Europe  and  Ameri- 
ca, is  not  only  accompanied  with  a  higher  civilization,  with 


254  The  Schism  in  Theology.  [part  i. 

more  political,  intellectual  and  moral  power  than  the  semi- 
barbarous  and  savage  religions  of  Asia  and  Africa,  but  con- 
tains within  itself  elements  of  truth,  vitality  and  permanence 
before  which  they,  in  their  weakness  and  decrepitude  must, 
sooner  or  later,  succumb  and  die  out,  as  did  the  Grecian,  Ro- 
man and  Scandinavian  mythologies,  which  it  encountered  in 
its  earlier  career.  Confucianism,  according  to  Neumann,  Mc- 
Clatchie  and  other  Chinese  scholars,  cited  by  Hardwicke,  has 
long  since  degenerated  from  the  pure  monotheism  of  Noah  into 
a  system  of  mere  atheistic  state-craft  and  utilitarian  ethics 
which,  having  been  checked  by  Budhism,  must  inevitably 
wane  before  the  advance  of  Christianity,  as  propagated  by  the 
missionaries  and  already  espoused  by  the  leaders  of  the  great 
native  rebellion.  Brahminism,  according  to  the  learned  Wil- 
liam Jones,  Wuttke  and  Wilson,  has  long  since  declined  into 
mere  dreamy  pantheism  among  the  priesthood,  with  the 
grossest  polytheism  among  the  populace,  and  though  it  has 
survived  its  conflicts  with  Budhism  and  Mahometanism,  yet  it 
is  not  so  likely  to  withstand  that  Christian  civilization  with 
which  it  is  fast  becoming  permeated.  Budhism  remains  as 
the  most  formidable  rival  of  Christianity,  embracing,  perhaps, 
as  many  millions  of  the  human  race  in  different  countries,  and 
yet,  according  to  the  testimony  of  Gutzlaff,  Remusat  and  Hue 
it  was  in  its  origin  little  more  than  a  species  of  negative  Pro- 
testantism against  Brahminism,  and  has  already  waned  into 
a  hopeless  nihilism,  ready  for  a  more  positive  Christian  faith 
as  its  proper  complement.  As  to  the  polytheism  and  fetich- 
ism  of  Africa,  America  and  Oceanica,  all  travelers  and  mis- 
sionaries agree  in  representing  them  as  degraded  forms  of  the 
grossest  nature-worship  and  devil-worship  which  can  offer  no 
intellectual  obstacle  to  a  purer  creed. 

The  triumph  of  Christianity  over  modern  Judaism  and  Mo- 
hametanism  is  also  predicted  from  similar  data  and  reason- 
ings. It  is  maintained  that  these  systems  are  at  best  mere 
dead  traditions  and  arrested  growths,  which  were  sloughed 
off  and  left  to  perish,  like  the  defunct  religions  of  ancient 
Egypt  and  Persia,  that  for  a  time  accompanied  the  early  pro- 
gress of  revelation.  Judaism,  having  long  since  discharged 
its  preparatory  mission,  is  regarded  by  all  Christian  writers  as 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Theology.  255 

an  anachronism  in  the  modern  world,  a  form  of  dormant 
legahsm,  which  can  only  be  quickened  into  evangelical  life  by 
the  conversion  of  the  Jews  to  Jesus  as  their  only  true  Mes- 
siah, and  possibly  their  return  to  the  Holy  Land  at  His  Second 
Advent.  Mohametanism,  according  to  such  authorities  as 
Weil,  Sprenger  and  Palgrave,  can  only  be  viewed  as  a  great 
relapse  from  Christianity  toward  Judaism,  a  species  of  sensual 
fatalism  fast  becoming  effete  and  corrupt  through  its  own  fiery 
passions.  And  Mormonism,  that  grotesque  mixture  of  all 
three  religions,  is  only  cited  as  an  anomalous  blot  upon  our 
Christian    civilization. 

Finally,  the  triumph  of  Christianity  over  all  antichristian 
heresy  and  infidelity  is  not  less  confidently  expected  as  its  last 
achievement.  It  is  claimed  by  all  Churches  that  the  one 
true  faith  will  yet  come  out  victorious  over  error,  as  in  former 
conflicts  with  schismatics  and  sceptics.  Catholic  writers  re- 
gard Protestantism  as  a  mere  incidental  heresy,  of  no  greater 
significance  in  the  onward  march  of  the  Church  than  the  Ari- 
anism  of  the  fourth  century.  Protestant  writers  look  upon 
Catholicism  as  a  vast  apostasy  of  the  dark  ages,  from  which 
the  whole  Church  is  now  recovering  with  primitive  power  and 
fervor.  And  both  Catholics  and  Protestants  unite  in  classing 
the  infidel  sciolists  of  the  day  with  the  Italian  naturalists,  the 
English  deists,  the  French  atheists  and  the  German  pantheists, 
as  foes  to  be  certainly  vanquished.  Thus  it  appears  that,  in 
one  way  or  another,  all  Christians  are  looking  forward  to  a 
time  when  Christianity  shall  have  extirpated  every  other  form 
of  religion. 

According  to  the  rival  hypothesis,  however,  Christianity  is 
itself  destined  to  be  supplanted,  together  with  other  religions, 
by  some  new  absolute  religion  of  the  future.  From  the  first, 
its  exclusive  claims  were  resisted  by  Judaism  with  a  bitterness 
that  lingers  to  this  hour.  Its  march  through  the  Roman  em- 
pire toward  universality  was  disputed  by  the  different  forms  of 
paganism,  which  sought  to  extinguish  it  with  persecutions, 
and  by  the  eclectic  infidelity  which  would  have  merged  both 
it  and  them  in  a  new  catholic  creed  of  reason.  The  rude  reli- 
gions of  the  North,  when  converted  by  it,  mingled  -fierce  bar- 
baric virtues  with  its  g;cntle  ccraces.     Mohametanism,  with  a 


256  The  ScJiism  in  Theology.  [part  i. 

resistless  proselytism  of  the  sword,  seemed  to  have  conquered 
its  very  shrine  and  wrested  away  half  its  empire.  Its  ever- 
asserted  catholicity,  repelled  from  Asia  and  Africa,  and  ap- 
parently rent  in  twain  throughout  Europe  by  means  of  the 
great  schism  between  the  Eastern  and  Western  Churches^  has 
since  been  repeatedly  broken  by  intestine  wars,  and  at  length 
pulverized  into  the  countless  sects  of  Protestantism.  And 
that  infidelity  which,  meanwhile,  has  grown  up  through  an 
abuse  of  its  very  light  and  freedom,  after  contending  with  it 
successively  in  Italy,  England,  France,  Germany  and  America, 
seems  now  preparing  to  formulate  the  terms  of  its  surrender 
and  downfall. 

It  was  at  first  claimed  that  the  new  absolute  religion  of  the 
future  will  grow  out  of  revealed  religion,  historically,  as 
Christianity  itself  has  grown  out  of  Judaism.  The  early  and 
mediaeval  millennarians  having  made  the  general  idea  of  such 
a  final  religion  familiar,  it  has  only  reniained  for  modern 
sociologists  to  construct  its  creed,  polity  and  worship  out  of 
the  existing  Christian  civilization.  The  New  Christianity  of 
St.  Simon  is  simply  a  proposed  reorganization  of  the  State 
upon  the  principles  of  the  Church,  such  as  charity,  fraternity 
and  equality,  with  the  addition  of  scientific  and  economical 
provisions  for  the  eradication  of  slavery,  war,  caste  and  pov- 
erty. Leroux,  besides  maintaining  the  historical  connection 
of  St.  Si  monism  with  Christianity,  resolved  revelation  into 
reminiscence  and  presentiment,  and  identified  the  future  life 
with  the  present  state,  the  individual  with  the  race,  God  with 
man,  and  heaven  with  earth ;  in  a  word,  made  the  new  reli- 
gion to  consist  in  mere  humanity.  Comte  completed  it  with 
his  Positivist  catechism,  calendar  and  ritual,  designed  for  the 
worship  and  commemoration  of  heroes,  sages  and  philanthro- 
pists, and  modelled  upon  the  forms  of  Catholicism.  Instead 
of  looking  for  such  a  renovated  Christianity,  however,  Dr. 
Phillipson,  consistently  with  his  hereditary  creed,  projected  a 
fulfilled  Judaism  or  Messianism  as  the  final  religion,  on  ac- 
count of  its  containing  that  essential  monotheism  which  had 
become  corrupted  by  the  followers  of  Christ  and  Mahomet. 
Islamism,  too,  by  James  Freeman  Clarke,  has  been  classed 
with  Christianity  and  Judaism  as  one  of  the  three  catholic 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Theology.  257 

monotheisms  or  unitarian  religions  which  alone  dispute  for 
supremacy  and  universaHty  over  all  nations  and  races.  And 
the  pantheistic  apologists  of  Brahminism  find  in  it  the  ele- 
ments of  a  universal  creed,  which  is  to  survive  the  decay  of 
all  other  religions. 

It  is  also  claimed  that  the  new  absolute  and  universal 
religion  will  issue  from  a  coalescence  of  Christianity  with 
other  natural  religions,  as  Judaism  has  preserved  and  assimi- 
lated the  residual  truths  of  the  Egyptian  and  Persian  mytholo- 
gies, only  to  become  itself  combined  with  those  of  the  Grecian 
and  Roman  systems.  The  English  and  German  deists  having 
elaborated  the  conception  of  such  an  essential  universal  faith 
common  to  all  nations,  some  comparative  theologians  are 
already  endeavoring  to  define  it  by  collating  Christian  with 
heathen  forms  of  religion  as  objects  of  scientific  study.  Max 
Miiller  proposes  to  call  it  Theoretic  Theology,  in  distinction 
from  that  Comparative  Theology  by  which  it  is  to  be  sus- 
tained and  illustrated,  and  would  derive  its  elements  from  the 
primitive  uncorrupted  teachings  of  the  great  founders  of  the 
ancient  religions.  Theodore  Parker  states  its  problem  to  be, 
by  means  of  the  human  faculties,  to  gather  from  Catholic  and 
Protestant,  Jew  and  Gentile,  Buddhist,  Brahmin  and  Mahom- 
etan, a  whole  of  theological  truth,  an  absolute  religion,  founded 
upon  nature  and  common  to  all  men.  Mr.  Wentworth  Hig- 
ginson,  in  a  lecture  on  the  Sympathy  of  Religions,  argues 
that  all  races  already  agree  in  the  chief  articles  of  natural 
theology,  such  as  the  being  of  a  God,  the  immortality  of  the 
soul  and  the  brotherhood  of  man.  Mr.  Samuel  Johnson,  in 
his  work  on  Oriental  Religions,  suggests  that  the  oldest  reli- 
gions may  have  an  important  function  in  purifying  that  theism 
still  irreverently  denounced  as  infidelity ;  that  the  mission  of 
Christianity  to  the  heathen  is  as  much  for  the  modification  of 
its  own  religious  peculiarities  as  theirs ;  and  that  the  change 
from  distinctive  Christianity  to  Universal  Religion  is  a  revolu- 
tion, compared  with  which  the  passage  from  Judaism  to  Chris- 
tianity itself  was  trivial.  It  is  claimed  by  Miss  Frances  Power 
Cobbe  that  the  mass  of  converted  Indian  youth  are  becoming 
mere  theists,  and  the  Hindu  philosopher,  Keshub  Chunder 
Sen,  has  established  relations  with  English  and  American 
2II 


258  Tlic  Schisvi  in   Theology.  [part  i. 

deists,  with  the  view  of  propagating  such  a  faith  as  the  future 
common  rehgion  of  all  nations. 

At  length,  to  such  historical  researches  and  compara- 
tive studies  have  been  added  still  more  speculative  attempts  to 
project  the  new  absolute  religion,  such  as  were  made  by  the 
Neo-platohists,  who  sought  to  extract  an  eclectic  creed  from 
the  fusion  of  Christian  with  Pagan  doctrines  in  their  day. 
The  German  idealists,  from  Fichte  to  Hegel,  having  striven  to 
sublimate  religion  into  philosophy,  it  has  oeen  but  a  step 
further  to  evaporate  Christianity  into  mythology,  and  retain 
only  such  residual  ideas  as  are  likely  to  survive  the  disinte- 
gration of  all  existing  religious  systems.  Accordingly  some 
advanced  writers  of  the  school  are  already  propounding  this 
philosophic  faith  of  posterity.  Mr.  W.  R.  Gregg,  in  his  Creed 
of  Christendom,  after  urging  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a 
revealed  religion  which  cannot  be  tested  by  reason,  proposes 
to  sift  the  truth  from  the  error  of  the  Scriptures  by  a  species 
of  Christian  Eclecticism,  the  elements  of  which  he  delineates. 
Dr.  Strauss,  in  his  final  work  on  the  "Old  Faith  and  the  New," 
having  shown  that  we  are  no  longer  Christians,  and  that  a  re- 
ligion, in  the  ordinary  sense,  is  scarcely  now  possible,  would 
substitute  for  it  the  conception  of  a  law-governed  cosmos,  de- 
veloping without  a  Creator,  yet  full  of  life  and  reason,  and 
to  be  treated  as  devoutly  as  if  it  were  a  deity.  Emile  Bur- 
nouf  seems  to  infer,  from  the  history  of  all  religions,  that  the 
common  germ  and  essence  of  all  of  them  is  neither  an  original 
revelation,  nor  a  barbaric  superstition,  but  a  metaphysical 'the- 
ory of  the  world,  which  it  is  the  mission  of  science  to  demon- 
strate through  its  conflict  with  religion.  And  Edward  Hart- 
mann,  in  a  recent  treatise,  styled  the  Disintegration  of  Christi- 
anity and  the  Religion  of  the  Future,  has  argued,  from  the 
unchristian  and  irreligious  tendencies  of  liberal  Protestantism, 
to  the  necessity  and  possibility  of  some  new  universal  religion, 
which  shall  exhibit  the  synthesis  of  oriental  and  occidental  pan- 
theism as  the  one  catholic,  philosophic  faith  of  mankind. 

The  third  and  last  stage  of  perfect  indifference  and  sepa- 
ration, which  has  been  reached  in  our  day,  is  that  of  rendering 
the  natural  or  rational  theology  wholly  independent  of  the 
biblical,  and  quietly  setting  aside  the  Scriptures  as  no  longer 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific   Theology.  259 

of  any  scientific  authority  upon  even  religious  questions.  It 
was  but  a  convenient  and  logical  distinction  which  the  early 
theists  pursued  in  treating  natural  religion  as  a  purely  rational 
science  preliminary  and  fundamental  to  revealed  religion,  and 
the  later  comparative  theologians  who  are  studying  the  con- 
trasts as  well  as  affinities  between  Christianity  and  heathen- 
ism, can  only  construct  a  new  apology  for  the  former  at  the 
expense  of  the  latter.  But  a  school  of  deistical  and  non- 
Christian  writers  is  now  aiming  to  exalt  heathenism  to  a  level 
with  Christianity  and  exhaust  revealed  religion  in  a  mere 
natural  or  essential  religion  common  to  mankind.  St.  Simon, 
Leroux,  and  Comte,  as  we  have  seen,  endeavored  to  invest  this 
new  religion  of  humanity  with  the  sanctions,  rites  and  obli- 
gations hitherto  appertaining  to  Christianity  or  Catholicism. 
Atheistic  as  such  a  religion  would  be,  Mr.  J.  Stuart  Mill  ven- 
tured to  suggest  that  even  Christians  might  find  in  it  an  in- 
structive and  profitable  object  of  contemplation.  Professor 
Huxley,  though  depreciating  it  as  mere  Catholicism  without 
Christianity,  only  substitutes  for  it  another  which  he  vaguely 
describes  as  a  sort  of  Calvinism  without  Christianity.  Dr. 
Tyndall,  in  the  same  Comtean  spirit,  has  lately  proposed 
special  prayers  in  some  hospital  ward  as  a  scientific  experi- 
ment to  test  the  physical  value  of  supplication.  And  while 
some  are  thus  attempting  to  eliminate  the  Christian  element 
from  religion,  others  seek  to  introduce  into  it  pagan  and  even 
heathen  elements.  The  Westminster  Review  long  since  com- 
plained that  Christian  advocates  stigmatized  pagan  antiquity 
as  profane  history,  alike  denying  the  divine  elements  in  hea- 
thenism and  the  human  elements  in  Christianity.  Dr.  Thomas 
Inman  in  his  voluminous  work  on  "Ancient  Faiths  embodied 
in  Ancient  Names,"  though  admitting  that  the  teachings  of 
Christ  may  have  been  originally  simple  and  pure,  endeavors 
to  trace  all  Christian  as  well  as  Pagan  symbolism  to  a  primi- 
tive sensual  culture,  and  ventures  to  associate  sacred  names 
and  emblems  with  the  grossest  ideas  and  images.  Advanced 
Deists,  such  as  Theodore  Parker,  Fox  and  Mackay  have 
maintained  that  the  only  real  revelation  of  God  is  contained 
in  the  universe  or  in  the  moral  constitution  of  human 
nature  common  to  all  acres  and  countries,  and  that   Christi- 


26o  The  Scliisni  in  Theology.  [part  i. 

anity  has  added  little  or  nothing  but  a  few  popular  symbols 
to  the  truths  already  uttered  in  the  Athenian  prison.  Samuel 
Johnson  describes  this  catholic  Deism  as  now  escaping  con- 
temporaneously from  Brahminical  and  from  Christian  dogmas, 
just  as  the  electric  wire  begins  to  encircle  the  material  globe 
and  all  the  relations  of  trade,  science  and  politics  are  becom- 
ing oecumenical.  Numerous  writers  on  comparative  theology 
without  avowing  any  hostility  to  the  Christian  revelation, 
virtually  obliterate  it  by  treating  it  as  a  branch  of  mythology, 
and  Max  MuUer  himself  repudiates  the  old  classification  of 
religions  into  the  natural  and  revealed  as  wholly  useless  for 
scientific  purposes. 

On  the  revealed  side  of  the  same  science,  however,  may  be 
traced  as  great  departures  from  the  rational  theory  of  religion. 
In  the  first  stage  there  was  the  great  Protestant  effort  to 
throw  off  a  false  scientific  theology,  the  traditional  dogma- 
tism of  the  schools.  It  was  the  period  when  the  pure  word 
of  God,  free  from  patristic  and  scholastic  comment,  was  being 
studied  anew,  and  eager  reformers  were  rejoicing  in  the  full 
light  of  a  restored  divine  revelation.  Wickliff,  Huss  and 
Wessel  had  led  the  way  as  pioneers  and  proto-martyrs. 
Luther  then  appeared  as  the  great  popular  leader  of  Protest- 
antism, and  by  his  translation  of  the  Bible  into  the  mother 
tongue,  by  his  expositions,  sermons  and  theses,  by  his 
hymns,  controversies  and  epistles,  and  above  all  by  his  bold 
apostolic  career,  gave  the  movement  an  impetus  which  after 
three  centuries  is  not  yet  spent.  Philip  Melancthon,  the 
scholar  of  the  Reformation,  wrought  into'  his  "Outlines  of 
Theology,"  the  first  compendium  of  the  Protestant  doctrines 
which  had  been  drawn  from  the  Scriptures  as  the  common 
heritage  of  believers.  John  Calvin,  the  great  constructive 
reformer,  reduced  them  to  a  compact  body  of  divinity  in  his 
famous  "Institutes  of  the  Christian  Religion."  At  length 
Cranmer,  the  victorious  martyr,  and  Knox,  who  never  feared 
the  face  of  man,  imported  them  into  the  Churches  of  England 
and  Scotland ;  the  one  incorporating  them  in  the  Book  of 
Common  Prayer,  and  the  other  in  the  Book  of  Common 
Order.  And  then  followed  the  great  Protestant,  Reformed 
and  Puritan  divines  of  the  ensuing  and  the  present  centuries. 


CHAP.  III.]  Biblical  Theology.  '  261 

together  with  their  Cathohc,  Arminian  and  Socinian  oppo- 
nents, all  endeavoring,  in  the  light  of  modern  thought  and 
research,  to  recast  the  whole  Scripture  doctrine  of  God  and 
divine  things. 

But  meanwhile,  in  the  next  stage  of  separation,  have  still 
remained  the  old  traditional  dogmas  concerning  the  verity, 
the  peculiar  doctrines  and  the  final  supremacy  of  Christianity, 
maintained  without  respect  to  the  new  science  of  compara- 
tive theology  which  has  been  struggling  into  light.  As  to 
the  verity  or  sufficiency  of  Christianity,  all  orthodox  Chris- 
tians have  concurred  in  treating  it  as  the  only  true  essential 
religion.  Roman  Catholics,  by  their  definition  of  the  Church, 
have  virtually  repudiated  the  distinction  between  natural  and 
revealed  religion,  and  excluded  beyond  the  pale  of  salvation 
not  merely  heretics  and  infidels,  but  Jews,  Turks,  and  all 
pagans  and  idolaters  as  followers  of  false  religion.  Protest- 
ants, while  admitting  the  distinction  between  natural  and 
revealed  theology,  have  maintained  the  utter  insufficiency  of 
the  former,  and  though  generally  conceding  the  salvability  of 
infants,  heathen  as  well  as  Christian,  have  nevertheless  prac- 
tically treated  all  other  religions  as  worthless  and  their  fol- 
lowers as  in  a  state  of  perdition.  At  the  same  time  there  is  a 
lack  of  intelligent  agreement  throughout  the  Christian  world  in 
regard  to  the  exact  relations  of  natural  to  revealed  religion, 
of  heathenism  to  Christianity,  and  the  extent  to  which  they 
may  have  had  a  common  origin  or  may  yet  have  an  ultimate 
combination. 

As  to  the  peculiar  doctrines  of  the  Christian  religion,  the 
greatest  diversity  began  to  prevail  at  the  Reformation.  Ro- 
man Catholics  at  once  reconstructed  their  theology,  polemi- 
cally, against  Protestantism.  The  Council  of  Trent,  repudia- 
ting the  Reformation  as  a  mere  heresy,  solemnly  reaffirmed, 
by  its  canons  and  catechism,  the  whole  mass  of  patristic  and 
scholastic  dogmas  as  containing  the  sum  of  religious  know- 
ledge ;  and  this  remained  the  faith  of  two-thirds  of  Christen- 
dom. Protestant  divines,  at  the  same  time,  proceeded  to  con- 
struct their  theology,  polemically,  against  Catholicism.  The 
German  churches,  repudiating  most  of  the  scholastic  and  some 
of  the  patristic  dogmas,  retained  simply  the  primitive,  cecu- 


262  The  Schisjn  in  Theology.  [part  i. 

menical  symbols,  the  Apostles',  Nicene  and  Athanasian  creeds, 
in  connection  with  the  confessions,  apologies  and  formularies 
of  Luther  and  Melancthon,  emphasizing  (the  great  doctrine  of 
justification  by  faith;  and  portions  of  the  same  system  found 
their  way,  through  Martin  Bucer,  into  the  English  Liturgy. 
Various  Reformed  divines  soon  constructed  their  theology, 
polemically,  against  Lutheranism,  as  well  as  Romanism,  in 
the  interest  of  Calvinism.  The  Synod  of  Geneva,  repudiating 
the  scholastic  and  most  of  the  patristic  dogmas,  retained  only 
the  Apostles'  Creed,  in  connection  with  the  confessions  of 
Calvin  and  Zwingle,  emphasizing  the  cardinal  doctrine  of  pre- 
destination ;  and  substantially  the  same  system  passed,  not 
only  into  the  confessions  of  the  French  Churches,but,  through 
Olevianus  andUrsinus,  into  the  catechism  of  the  Dutch  Church; 
through  Cranmer  and  Ridley,  into  the  articles  of  the  English 
Church ;  through  Knox,  into  those  of  the  Scottish  Church, 
and  ultimately,  through  the  Westminster  Assembly,  into  the 
standards  of  the  Congregational  and  Presbyterian  Churches  of 
the  United  States.  In  these  different  Churches,  however,  nu- 
merous sectarian  divines  soon  followed,  constructing  their 
theology,  schismatically,  against  other  creeds,  in  the  interest 
of  some  single  denomination,  congregation  or  person.  In  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church  the  Jesuits,  under  Loyola,  and  Port- 
royalists,  under  Jansen,  renewed  the  battle  of  Protestantism 
within  the  walls.  In  the  Lutheran  and  Reformed  Churches 
the  Anabaptists,  under  Menno,  separated  on  the  question  of 
infant  baptism.  In  the  Church  of  Poland  the  Unitarians,  un- 
der Socinus,  rejected  the  dogma  of  the  trinity.  In  the  Church 
of  Holland  the  Remonstrants,  under  Arminius,  departed  from 
the  doctrine  of  predestination  toward  universalism.  In  the 
Church  of  England  the  Presbyterians,  under  Baxter,  dissented 
from  prelacy  in  favor  of  a  reformed  episcopacy  and  liturgy ; 
the  Congregationalists,  under  Nye,  dissented  from  Presbytery 
in  favor  of  local  polity  and  worship ;  and  the  Quakers,  under 
Fox,  dissented  from  all  Churches  and  rites,  in  favor  of  mere 
inner  light  and  rapture.  And  in  the  Churches  of  the  United 
States,  these  different  sectaries  have  simply  reappeared,  sowing 
broadcast  the  dragons'  teeth  of  a  new  brood  of  heresies,  em- 
bracing the  additional  varieties  of  Methodists  and  Baptists,  and 


CHAP.  III.]  Biblical  Theology.  263 

ranging  between  the  gross  Judaism  of  Mormon  and  the  crude 
Christianism  of  Campbell.  In  a  word,  for  three  centuries, 
throughout  Christendom  countless  sects,  following  their  dif- 
ferent leaders,  have  gone  on  protesting  against  Protestantism, 
reforming  the  Reformation,  purifying  Puritanism,  dissenting 
from  Dissent,  and  redividing  after  each  new  division,  down  to 
the  very  dust  and  powder  of  individuality  itself 

As  to  the  final  supremacy  of  Christianity,  there  is  more  ap- 
parent agreement,  with  differences  mainly  as  to  the  means  em- 
ployed. Roman  Catholics,  consistently  with  their  system,  an- 
ticipate the  future  destruction  of  all  false  religion  through  the 
Jesuit  propagandism  in  Heathendom  and  the  aggrandizement 
of  the  papal  hierarchy  in  Christendom.  Protestants  also  look 
for  the  predicted  disappearance  of  all  anti-Christian  error  and 
superstition ;  some  anticipating  it  as  a  spiritual  triumph  of 
Christianity,  effected  by  divine  Providence,  in  the  progress  of 
missions  and  civilization,  and  others  maintaining  that  it  will 
be  the  result  of  vast  political  and  planetary  judgments  attend- 
ing the  miraculous  return  and  reign  of  Christ  in  a  new  im- 
pending dispensation. 

In  the  last  stage  of  complete  separation,  we  may  now  be- 
hold an  independent  biblical  theology,  which  would  openly 
repudiate  the  whole  scientific  theology  as  of  no  dogmatic  in- 
terest or  apologetic  value.  Some  few  large-minded  divines 
there  may  be,  such  as  Ulrici,  Patton  and  Krauth,  who 
discern  the  common  ground  between  natural  and  revealed 
religion,  who  vindicate  the  former  as  fundamental,  or  at  least 
preliminary  to  the  latter,  and  who  may  even  seek  to  bring 
them  into  a  just  harmony,  consistent  with  the  supremacy  of 
the  one  and  the  integrity  of  the  other ;  but  the  treatise  has 
yet  to  be  written  which"  shall  reduce  them  to  a  systematical 
body  of  Christian  science.  And  the  vast  majority  of  modern 
theologians  accept  this  schism  as  unavoidable  and  even  un- 
important. Though  the  physical  and  mental  sciences  are 
shedding  increasing  light  upon  the  open  page  of  Scripture, 
though  the  ancient  religions,  with  their  traditional  and  innate 
truths,  are  coming  into  closer  contact  with  the  one  pure  rev- 
elation, and  though  the  countless  sects  around  us  are  but  frag- 
ments, more  or  less  alloyed,  of  a  common  Christianity,  yet  the 


264  TJic  Schism  in  MctapJiysics.  [part  i. 

great  historic  Churches,  with  all  their  learned  chairs  and  pul- 
pits, still  remain  in  an  attitude  of  mutual  avoidance  and  ex- 
clusion, each  as  to  what  lies  beyond  its  own  pale.  The  oldest 
of  them,  the  Greek  Church,  exscinding  Romanism,  stands  be- 
tween Heathendom  and  Christendom,  like  a  venerable  ruin, 
overgrown  with  traditional  dogmas.  The  Roman  Church,  ex- 
scinding Protestantism,  stands  at  the  centre  of  Christendom, 
like  a  beleagured  fortress,  fulminating  its  syllabus  against  all 
modern  science  and  culture.  Even  the  Protestant  Churches, 
exscinding  one  another,  seem  content  only  to  fight  their  old 
polemics  over  again  within  the  lines,  or  to  shut  themselves  up 
in  the  citadel  of  orthodoxy  and  turn  their  fire  against  their 
own  sentinels  and  defenders,  while  the  hosts  of  infidelity  are 
mining  and  marching  around  them.  And  commingled  with 
these  various  Churches  are  the  innumerable  sects,  each  of 
which  fancies  it  possesses  the  only  true  divine  knowledge,  that 
entire  religious  sense  of  scripture,  reason  and  nature,  which 
neither  the  fathers,  nor  the  schoolmen,  nor  the  reformers,  nor 
any  later  divines,  nor  yet  the  sages  and  saints  of  all  time,  had 
ever  before  extracted. 

And  thus  theology,  under  the  indifferent  spirit,  on  the  one 
side,  would  wither  away  into  a  mere  rational  religion,  little 
better  than  paganism,  and  on  the  other  side,  would  be  forced 
into  some  narrow  creed,  too  insignificant  to  be  named. 

The  Schism  in  Metaphysics. 

Passing  beyond  the  physical  and  psychical  sciences  into  the 
recondite  region,  common  to  them  all,  denominated  metaphy- 
sics or  ontology,  the  science  of  absolute  being,  we  shall  there 
find  the  two  antagonists,  the  sciolists  and  dogmatists,  ranged 
in  opposing  lines,  like  two  marshalled  armies,  through  the  en- 
tire field  of  thought  and  research. 

On  the  rational  side  of  metaphysical  science,  in  its  first  and 
legitimate  stage  of  departure,  efforts  were  made  to  disentangle 
it  from  the  subtleties  of  the  scholastic  divines.  It  was  the 
time  when  emancipated  thinkers  were  sifting  and  testing  anew 
the  traditional  distinctions  between  essences  and  accidents, 
thoughts  and  things,  and  probing  afresh  the  perennial  prob- 
lems of  absolute  existence,  causality  and  infinity,  which  had 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Ontology.  265 

been  so  long  merged  in  theological  dogmas.  As  early  as 
the  fifteenth  century,  the  Dialectic  of  Plato  and  the  First 
Philosoi^hy  of  Aristotle  were  revived  outside  of  the  cloister  in 
the  great  schools  of  Florence  and  Padua,  and  thus  brought 
into  living  connection  with  the  new  metaphysical  thought  of 
the  modern  world.  Lord  Bacon  then,  for  the  first  time, 
sharply  distinguished  the  provinces  of  physics  and  metaphy- 
sics, assigning  to  the  former  the  investigation  of  material 
phenomena  and  forces,  and  reserving  for  the  latter  the  inquiry 
into  essential  forms  and  final  causes.  Descartes  began  the 
work  of  constructing  metaphysical  science,  in  the  region  of 
rational  psychology,  by  defining  the  soul  as  a  thinking  sub- 
stance or  essential  reality  manifested  in  consciousness.  Spi- 
noza followed,  in  the  region  of  rational  theology,  with  his 
definition  of  God  as  the  one  absolute  substance,  of  which  all 
other  existences  are  but  modifications.  Leibnitz,  in  the  region 
of  rational  cosmology,  carried  the  notion  of  active  substances, 
infinitesimal  forces,  metaphysical  points,  throughout  the  sensi- 
ble world.  Christian  Wolf,  then  traversing  the  entire  region 
of  ontology  with  encyclopsediac  range,  systematized  the  three 
metaphysical  sciences  of  Descartes,  Spinoza  and  Leibnitz, 
propounded  their  various  problems,  and  endeavored  to  solve 
them  by  means  of  demonstrative  reasoning.  At  length  Kant, 
as  the  greatest  of  metaphysical  critics,  by  distinguishing  be- 
tween phenomena  and  noumena,  between  the  subjective  ideas 
and  the  objective  realities  of  God,  the  soul  and  the  world,  per- 
formed the  important  service  of  detaching  ontology  from  phe- 
nomenology, or  at  least  rational  from  empirical  psychology, 
cosmology  and  theology,  leaving  the  rational  no  other  support 
than  his  so-called  practical  reason.  And  since  that  time,  in 
spite  of  his  protest  against  all  future  metaphysics,  a  host  of 
astute  thinkers,  such  as  Fichte,  Schelling  and  Hegel,  Herbart, 
Beneke  and  Lotze,  Shopenhauer,  Hartman,  Ueberweg,  Trend- 
lendberg  and  Ulrici,  have  been  striving  to  construct  a  scientific 
ontology  or  theory  of  absolute  and  infinite  being,  as  regu- 
lated by  logical  and  empirical  laws. 

Meanwhile,  in  the  second  separative  stage,  the  revealed  doc- 
trines of  the  trinity,  the  incarnation  and  the  atonement  have 
been  gradually  ignored  or  superseded  by  various  hypotheses 


266  Tlie  Schism  in  Metaphysics.  [part  i. 

concerning  the  origin,  development  and  destiny  of  the  uni- 
verse, considered  as  embracing  both  man  and  nature  and  in- 
volving the  realities  of  the  soul,  the  world  and  God.  As  to 
the  first  of  these  problems,  the  origin  of  the  universe,  there 
have  been  the  two  rival  opinions  of  dualism  and  monism. 
According  to  the  former,  all  existence  has  originated  in  two 
distinct  principles,  the  one  spiritual  and  the  other  material. 
It  had  been  held  by  the  followers  of  Zoroaster  and  the  Magi, 
that  the  mixed  state  of  things  in  the  world  is  due  to  a  good 
and  an  evil  principle,  Ormuzd  and  Ahriman,  in  conflict 
throughout  the  whole  creation.  The  Greek  philosophers, 
Anaxagoras  and  Empedocles,  had  also  sought  to  trace  the 
physical  universe  to  active  and  passive  principles,  such  as 
mind  and  matter,  love  and  hate.  The  Gnostics,  in  the  second 
century,  and  the  Manichaeans,  in  the  third  century,  combining 
the  Persian  dualism  with  the  Hebrew  doctrine  of  good  and 
bad  angels,  had  regarded  God  and  chaos,  Christ  and  Satan,  as 
conflicting  powers  in  creation ;  and  even  Lactantius  went  so 
far  as  to  represent  the  two  latter  as  the  first  and  second-born 
son  of  the  Father,  the  right  and  left  hand  of  God.  Though 
the  opposite  dogma,  of  an  absolute  production  of  all  things 
from  nothing,  prevailed  at  length  in  the  Christian  Church,  yet 
there  were  mystical  sects  in  the  middle  ages,  who  revived  the 
Manichsan  notions  of  the  eternity  and  sinfulness  of  matter,  of 
a  pre-existent  chaos  and  of  diabolic  opposition  in  creation. 
Traces  of  the  same  view  have  continually  reappeared  since 
the  reformation  in  the  writings  of  both  Catholic  and  Protestant 
divines,  who  have  depicted  creation  as  ever  involving  a  strug- 
gle between  the  opposing  powers  of  light  and  darkness,  more 
or  less  incompatible  with  the  divine  unity  and  supremacy. 
Deistical  writers  have  also  striven  to  place  the  world  and  God 
in  a  state  of  mutual  independence.  And  with  the  extraordi- 
nary growth  of  speculative  thought  in  our  day,  the  notion  of 
a  dual  origin  of  things  has  been  assuming  more  scientific 
guises. 

It  has  appeared  in  the  region  of  rational  cosmology  among 
the  physical  sciences.  Leading  physicists  and  chemists,  with 
more  or  less  metaphysical  purpose,  have  maintained  a  duality 
of  matter  and  force  known  as   dynamism.     Newton,  though 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Cosmology.  267 

an  atomist,  could  only  conceive  of  force  as  an  expression  of 
mind,  of  some  voluntary  agent  imparting  it  to  the  ultimate 
atoms  of  matter  in  the  form  of  attraction,  repulsion  and  other 
occult  energies.  Leibnitz  regarded  the  atoms  themselves  as 
intrinsically  active  substances  termed  monads.  Boscovich, 
in  his  dynamic  theory,  treated  them  as  metaphysical  points 
or  centres  of  attraction  and  repulsion.  Dalton,  Herschell  and 
Clerk  Maxwell  have  retained  similar  views.  Leading  biolo- 
gists also  have  maintained  a  duality  of  matter  and  life  known 
as  vitalism.  In  the  earlier  speculations  upon  organized  beings 
there  had  always  been  supposed  some  immaterial  principle 
or  cause  of  life,  such  as  the  psyche  of  Pythagoras,  the  ar- 
chaeus  of  Paracelsus,  and  the  anima  of  Stahl,  who  went  so 
far  as  to  imagine  that  it  unconsciously  moulds  the  body  and 
presides  over  all  its  functions.  Berthez  termed  it  the  vital 
principle  or  vital  force  to  distinguish  it  from  the  physical  and 
chemical  forces  which  govern  inorganic  matter.  Bichat 
lodged  it  in  the  animal  tissues  under  the  name  of  the  vital 
properties.  Buffon  endeavored  to  discriminate  between  or- 
ganic and  inorganic  molecules,  the  former  composing  dead 
or  lifeless  matter,  and  the  latter  animate  or  living  matter. 
And  Lionel  Beale  still  adheres  to  similar  opinions  in  his 
speculations  upon  protoplasm  or  the  matter  of  life. 

The  same  tendency  has  shown  itself  in  the  region  of  ra- 
tional psychology.  The  chief  votaries  of  the  science  have 
long  held  a  duality  of  matter  and  spirit  known  as  spiritualism. 
Descartes  seems  to  have  begun  this  movement  by  distin- 
guishing mind  and  matter,  soul  and  body,  as  separate  sub- 
stances, the  one  endowed  with  thought  and  the  other  with 
extension,  and  both  mechanically  interacting  by  divine  con- 
course. Leibnitz  and  Wolf  substituted  for  the  Cartesian  dual- 
ism a  pluralism  of  graduated  substances  or  monads,  both 
material  and  spiritual,  whose  mutual  agreement,  like  that  of 
two  synchronous  clocks,  is  due  to  a  divine  pre-established 
harmony.  Kant  then,  by  his  distinction  between  phenomena 
and  noumena,  maintained  a  dualism  of  the  ideal  and  the 
real  worlds,  but  left  the  mode  of  their  correspondence  and 
interaction  in  obscurity.  And  after  numerous  forms  of  ideal- 
istic  monism   had   prevailed  in  the  Kantian  metaphysics,  a 


268  Tlic  Schism  in  Mctapliysics.  [part  i. 

reaction  has  brought  back  the  duahsni  of  Descartes  and  the 
pkiraHsm  of  Leibnitz.  Herbart,  Beneke,  and  Lotze  have 
been  re-defining  the  soul,  in  distinction  from  the  body,  as  a 
spaceless  essence,  a  spiritual  atom,  a  psychic  force,  endowed 
with  the  immaterial  properties  of  thought,  free  will,  and  im- 
mortality ;  and  have  still  farther  widened  the  Kantian  dual- 
ism by  numerically  separating  things  from  thoughts,  co-ordi- 
nating psychical  with  physical  processes  in  plants  and  animals 
throughout  external  nature,  and  rendering  even  the  elements 
and  atoms  sensitive  and  conscious.  Dr.  Krauth  has  shown 
that  Berkeley,  though  holding  a  form  of  spiritualistic  monism, 
conceded  a  dualism  of  the  Infinite  Spirit  as  the  cause  of  ideas 
and  the  finite  spirits  receiving  those  ideas ;  and  has  himself 
recognized  in  the  one  human  person  a  duality  of  soul  and 
body,  the  former  implicated  with  the  latter,  not  like  a  spider 
in  a  cobweb  of  nerves,  but  as  a  sort  of  vice-creator,  immanent 
yet  dominant  in  its  own  little  creation. 

But  the  dualistic  tendency  has  come  to  full  effect  in  the 
region  of  rational  theology  or  general  ontology.  Theistic 
metaphysicians  in  the  schools  of  Schelling  and  Hegel,  pro- 
testing against  the  reigning  pantheism,  have  insisted  upon 
a  grand  original  duality  of  God  and  the  world.  Christian 
Hermann  Weisse,  as  a  critic  of  Hegel  and  disciple  of 
Schelling,  took  for  his  idea  of  Deity  a  personal  God, 
distinct  from  the  world,  yet  manifested  in  it  under  the 
form  of  a  trinity  of  nature,  man  and  art.  Immanuel  Her- 
mann Fichte,  as  a  follower  of  the  elder  Fichte  and  of  Hegel, 
in  his  Speculative  Theology  and  Theistic  View  of  the  World, 
postulated  for  the  absolute  First  Cause  a  rational  Creator,  im- 
manent in  his  own  creation,  yet  independent  of  it,  and  logically 
producing  all  things  out  of  nothing,  according  to  the  laws  of 
thought.  Hermann  Ulrici,  in  his  works  entitled  Speculation 
and  Exact  Science,  God  and  Nature,  has  maintained  that  the 
Creator  is  not  only  independent  of  His  creation,  but  abso- 
lutely superior  to  it,  as  the  one  eternal  author  and  disposer  of 
the  universe,  which  he  both  postulates  as  rational  and  develops 
as  real.  Other  German  thinkers,  such  as  Carriere,  Caly- 
baus  and  Giinther,  have  held  that  the  world,  so  far  from  ema- 
nating or  being  produced  from  God,  is  created  and  maintained 


CHAP.  III.]  Scieiitific  Cosmology.  269 

in  antithesis  to  Him  by  an  objective  exertion  of  His  power. 
And  some  English  and  American  writers,  such  as  Chalmers, 
Martineau  and  Mahan,  for  the  sake  of  the  teleological  argu- 
ment in  natural  theology,  have  rashly  conceded  the  co-eternity 
with  God,  not  merely  of  time  and  space,  but  of  matter  and  na- 
ture, as  external  and  independent  existences.  It  appears 
therefore  that,  in  the  end,  an  extreme  dualism  would  co-ordi- 
nate mind  and  matter  as  two  distinct  essences  both  in  man 
and  in  nature. 

According  to  the  rival  school  of  monism,  however,  all  things 
originate  in  but  one  essential  principle,  material  or  spiritual. 
Though  the  oriental  religions  and  earlier  western  philosophies 
were  mainly  dualistic,  yet  gradually  there  grew  up  some 
purely  spiritualistic  theory  of  the  world,  such  as  that  of  Par- 
menides,  who  identified  being  with  thought,  or  some  exclu- 
sively materialistic  theory,  like  that  of  Epicurus  and  Lucre- 
tius, who  held  that  the  entire  universe,  including  both  animate 
and  inanimate  things,  souls  as  well  as  bodies,  and  even  the 
image-like  gods  themselves,  had  arisen  by  a  fortuitous  con- 
course of  atoms,  as  the  results  of  endless  compositions  and  re- 
compositions  of  the  original  particles  of  matter.  Among  the 
fathers  a  Tertullian  may  have  attributed  a  refined  corporeity  to 
God,  and  among  the  schoolmen  a  John  Erigena  may  have 
ascribed  a  divine  ideality  to  the  world,  while  an  Amaury  and 
Dinant,  by  identifying  the  Creator  with  primordial  matter,  may 
have  broached  a  sort  of  materialistic  pantheism.  But  it  was 
not  until  the  Reformation  that  Gassendi  began  that  material- 
istic movement,  and  Spinoza  that  pantheistic  movement,  which 
led  to  the  extreme  forms  of  monism  in  our  day. 

In  rational  cosmology  the  tendency  has  shown  itself  as  a 
reaction  from  its  opposite.  The  duality  of  matter  and  force 
has  been  renounced  by  modern  atomists,  such  as  Moleschott 
and  Biichner,  who  have  revived  the  crude  materialism  of 
Democritus  and  D'  Holbach,  and  are  maintaining  the  proper- 
ties of  attraction,  repulsion  and  affinity  to  be  inseparable  from 
the  particles  which  manifest  them,  and,  indeed,  inconceivable 
without  them,  according  to  their  maxim,  "  No  matter  without 
force;  no  force  without  matter."  The  distinction  between 
dead  matter  and  living  matter  has  also  been  disappearing  from 


2/0  The  Schism  in  Metaphysics.  [part  i. 

the  view  of  some  recent  biologists,  as  one  vegetal  and  animal 
process  after  another  has  been  referred  to  purely  physical 
and  chemical  laws.  Professor  Huxley  lately  maintained  that 
protoplasm^  the  original  organic  matter  of  all  living  beings,  is 
composed  of  the  same  atoms  as  ordinary  lifeless  matter,  and 
differs  from  it  only  in  the  manner  by  which  they  are  aggrega- 
ted ;  so  that  there  is  no  more  reason  for  explaining  vital  phe- 
nomena by  a  supposed  principle  of  vitality  than  to  speak  of 
aquosity  as  a  cause  of  water.  It  is  claimed  that  organic  pro- 
cesses, such  as  digestion,  can  be  artificially  imitated,  and  even 
that  living  beings  may  be  produced  by  chemical  experiment. 

In  rational  psychology  the  same  tendency  has  appeared  in 
opposite  directions.  On  the  spiritualistic  side,  since  Berkeley 
maintained  the  existence  of  nought  but  percipient  minds,  the 
various  schools  of  idealists  have  been  striving  to  reduce 
material  properties,  light  and  heat,  gravity  and  figure,  even 
time  and  space,  into  mental  activities,  perceptive  and  concep- 
tive,  until  they  have  lost  sight  of  all  matter  in  mere  mind. 
But,  at  the  same  time,  on  the  materialistic  side,  since  Locke 
suggested  the  possibility  of  cogitative  matter,  the  different 
schools  of  sensationalists  have  been  referring  the  same  pro- 
perties to  sensible  objects  and  resolving  sensation,  reflection, 
volition,  the  mental  faculties  themselves,  into  material  pro- 
cesses, nervous  and  cerebral,  until  they  have  lost  sight  of  all 
mind  in  mere  matter.  And  with  the  duality  of  reason  and 
sense  has  at  length  wholly  vanished  the  fundamental  distinc- 
tion between  body  and  soul,  as  the  new  school  of  physiologi- 
cal psychologists  has  sought  to  blend  the  laws  and  processes 
of  the  one  with  those  of  the  other.  Maudsley  has  defined 
the  mind  as  a  mere  natural  force,  like  any  chemical  force  in 
the  organism.  Husche  has  likened  the  relation  between 
thought  and  the  molecular  movements  of  the  brain  to  that 
between  color  and  the  vibrations  of  ether.  It  was  a  motto  of 
Feuerbach,  "Without  phosphorus,  no  thought."  Huxley 
has  merged  the  will  in  the  animal  automatism  as  mere  poten- 
tial energy.  And  Vogt  has  classed  the  moral  feelings  and 
faculties  as  bodily  organs  and  functions. 

But  it  is  in  the  realm  of  rational  theology  that  the  monistic 
tendency  has   reached   its   climax.     Whilst  the  pantheistical 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Cosmology.  271 

disciples  of  Schelling  and  Hegel  have  been  unfolding  a  sort 
of  universal  idealistic  monism,  a  class  of  atheistic  metaphysi- 
cians has  reached  a  corresponding  species  of  materialistic 
monism  by  deriving  the  totality  of  existence  from  matter 
alone  as  the  sole  original  substance  of  the  universe,  and  the 
grand  duality  of  God  and  the  world  has  been  abandoned  and 
lost.  Shopenhauer  and  Feuerbach  have  resolved  the  very 
idea  of  deity  into  a  mere  phantasm  of  the  brain  or  illusion 
of  sense.  Biichner,  in  the  baldest  way,  has  advocated  the 
infinity,  eternity,  and  indestructibility  of  matter,  and  treated 
all  forms  of  existence,  both  animate  and  inanimate,  as  its 
mere  fatalistic  combinations.  Strauss  has  declared  that  ideal- 
ism and  materiahsm  are  a  mere  quarrel  about  words,  both 
having  a  common  foe  in  that  Christian  dualism  which  has  so 
long  opposed  the  soul  to  the  body,  time  to  eternity,  and  an 
eternal  Creator  to  a  created  and  perishable  universe.  And 
thus  an  extreme  monism  would  merge  together  all  forms 
of  mind  and  matter  in  some  one  absolute  principle  pervading 
both  man  and  nature. 

As  to  the  second  great  metaphysical  problem,  the  develop- 
ment of  absolute  being,  there  have  arisen  the  two  rival  schools 
of  creationism  and  evolutionism.  According  to  the  former, 
the  whole  universe,  both  spiritual  and  material,  has  proceeded 
from  Deity  by  successive  acts  of  creation.  It  was  the  dogma 
of  the  ancient  and  mediaeval  Church,  from  Augustine  to 
Aquinas,  and  also  of  Protestant  as  well  as  Catholic  divines, 
that  the  heaven,  or  angelic  and  purely  spiritual  world,  was 
first  created,  and  afterwards  the  earth,  or  purely  material 
world,  and  then  man,  with  a  dual  nature,  partly  material  and 
partly  spiritual,  and  that  ever  since  plants,  animals  and  men 
have  been  produced  and  sustained  by  distinct  acts  of  divine 
power,  wisdom  and  goodness.  And  this  dogma,  in  the  pro- 
gress of  modern  thought  and  research,  has  been  cast  into 
scientific  forms  as  a  metaphysical  theory  of  the  world,  from 
its  origin  to  its  consummation.  Descartes,  Leibnitz  and  Sam- 
uel Clark  have  been  followed  by  hosts  of  speculative  theists, 
in  referring  the  universe  to  an  infinite  and  absolute  person  or 
Spirit,  whose  power,  wisdom  and  goodness  are  manifested, 
throughout  nature  and  hi.story,  in  cumulative  stages  of  crea- 


2/2  The  Schism  in  Metaphysics.  [part  i. 

tion  and  providence.  Newton,  Herschel,  Clerk  Maxwell  and 
numerous  other  devout  physicists,  have  regarded  all  forces 
and  atoms  throughout  the  inorganic  world  as  the  subordinate 
agents  and  rnanufactured  articles  of  a  Creator,  whose  will  is 
the  primary  source  of  all  mechanical  and  chemical  energy, 
and  whose  mind  is  expressed  in  all  dynamical  laws.  Cuvier, 
Agassiz  and  Guyot,  with  many  other  naturalists,  have  treated 
all  vegetal  and  animal  species,  throughout  the  organic  world, 
as  archetypes  or  ideals,  first  conceived  by  God,  and  then  suc- 
cessively executed,  through  one  geological  age  after  another, 
in  a  series  ascending  from  the  mollusk  up  to  man,  the  end 
and  climax  of  the  whole  animal  creation.  Bossuet,  Edwards, 
Buchez,  together  with  a  new  rising  school  of  scientific  histo- 
rians, have  been  referring  all  political  and  religious  phenome- 
na, throughout  the  social  world,  to  divine  dispensations  of 
justice  and  mercy,  following  one  another  in  pre-established 
order  from  the  Fall  of  Adam,  the  Flood  of  Noah,  and  the 
Coming  of  Christ,  to  the  final  judgment  and  millennium.  And 
thus  the  entire  universe,  material  and  spiritual,  has  been  ex- 
hibited by  theistic  metaphysicians  as  a  series  of  separate  di- 
vine creations. 

According  to  the  opposite  school  of  thinkers,  the  totality  of 
existence  proceeds  from  some  primitive  substance  or  princi- 
ple, under  fixed  laws  of  evolution,  embracing  all  mental  as 
well  as  material  phenomena.  It  was  an  opinion  of  many 
Greek  and  Roman  philosophers,  from  Democritus  to  Lucre- 
tius, that  the  original  atoms  or  particles  of  matter,  combining 
and  re-combining  in  mathematical  proportions  have  successive- 
ly given  rise  to  the  solid  forms  of  minerals,  plants  and  ani- 
mals, the  more  ethereal  souls  of  men,  and  even  the  visionary 
gods  themselves,  sitting  aloft  as  indifferent  spectators  of  the 
ceaseless  ebb  and  flow  of  nature.  And  though  such  opinions 
were  superseded  in  the  Christian  Church,  or  but  occasionally 
blended  with  pantheistic  views  of  creation  and  providence,  yet 
in  the  progress  of  modern  science,  they  have  begun  to  acquire 
the  pretensions  of  a  metaphysical  theory  of  the  entire  devel- 
opment of  the  universe,  through  all  its  material  and  spiritual 
stages.  Spinoza  and  Boehme  have  been  succeeded  by  ideal- 
istic pantheists,  such  as  Schelling  and  Hegel,  aiming  to  un- 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Cosmology.  273 

fold  the  sum  of  existence,  nature,  humanity,  deity,  out  of  ab- 
solute reason,  under  logical  laws,  from  the  emptiest  notion  of 
nothing  to  the  fullest  idea  of  existence.  Gassendi  and  Hobbes, 
as  restorers  of  the  ancient  atomism,  and  Leibnitz  and  Bosco- 
vich,  as  forerunners  of  the  modern  dynamism,  have  been  fol- 
lowed by  materialistic  atheists,  such  as  Biichner,  Vogt  and 
Strauss,  maintaining  the  absolute  infinity  and  eternity  of  mat- 
ter as  ever  combining  and  re-combining  under  its  present 
forms ;  and  by  mathematical  physicists,  such  as  Grove,  Mayer 
and  Helmholtz,  advocating  a  gradual  correlation  and  conser- 
vation of  force  in  the  nebula,  the  sun  and  the  planet  through- 
out the  inorganic  universe.  Lamarck,  Goethe  and  Monboddo 
have  been  followed  by  speculative  naturalists,  such  as  Bastian, 
Darwin  and  Heeckel,  who  argue  for  a  continual  evolution  and 
survival  of  species  throughout  the  organic  realm  among  plants, 
animals  and  men,  from  the  lowest  up  to  the  highest  forms  of 
life.  Vico,  Turgot  and  Herder  have  been  succeeded  by  sci- 
entific historians,  such  as  Buckle,  Draper  and  Quetelet,  who 
hold  that  nations,  races,  the  whole  human  species  proceed  un- 
der periodic  and  progressive  laws  in  art,  science,  politics  and 
religion,  from  the  rudest  stages  of  barbarism  up  to  the  most 
refined  forms  of  civilization.  At  length  such  special  views, 
by  a  class  of  atheistic  or  non-theistic  metaphysicians  have 
been  gathered  into  the  imposing  picture  of  a  universal  and  per- 
petual evolution.  Herbert  Spencer  is  endeavoring  to  trace 
the  development  of  all  phenomenal  existence  from  persistent 
force,  under  a  law  of  progressive  hetereogenity,  from  the  atom 
up  to  the  orb,  and  from  the  animalcule  up  to  the  common- 
wealth. Professor  Huxley  declares  that  the  whole  existing 
world  once  lay  potentially  in  the  cosmic  vapor,  and  that  from  a 
knowledge  of  the  properties  of  its  molecules,  it  would  have 
been  possible  to  predict  the  present  state  of  the  British  flora 
and  fauna  as  easily  as  one  might  tell  what  would  happen  to 
the  vapor  of  the  breath  on  a  winter's  day.  Doctor  Tyndall 
has  not  only  admitted  that  all  our  politics,  art  and  philosophy 
may  thus  have  been  latent  in  a  fiery  cloud,  but  has  re- 
cently startled  scientific  as  well  as  religious  circles  by  pro- 
claiming, from  the  chair  of  the  British  Association,  that  in  the 
original  matter  of  the  world  he  beholds  the  promise  and  po- 


2/4  TJie  Scliism  in  MctapJiysics.  [part  i. 

tency  of  every  quality  of  life.  And  thus  the  entire  course  of 
the  universe,  by  the  extreme  evolutionists,  would  be  exhibited 
as  one  continuous  development  without  divine  forethought  or 
intelligent  design. 

As  to  the  third  great  metaphysical  problem,  the  destiny  or 
design  of  the  universe,  there  are  now  emerging  the  two  rival 
schools  of  optimism  and  pessimism.  According  to  the  former, 
the  existing  world  is  the  best  possible.  Greek  and  Roman 
philosophers,  from  Plato  to  Cicero,  had  dwelt  upon  the  order 
and  beauty  of  the  cosmos  or  mundus,  and  thus  illumined 
somewhat  the  tragic  fatalism  of  the  heathen  mind.  Christian 
fathers  of  the  East  and  West,  from  Clement  to  Lactantius,  had 
exhibited  the  creation  as  beneficently  designed  for  the  good 
of  man.  Even  the  despairing  medijeval  view  of  the  world  and 
of  life  had  been  relieved  by  the  prospect  of  a  new  creation, 
adorned  with  the  beauty  of  holiness.  And  at  length,  in  the 
wake  of  Protestant  free  thought  and  scientific  research,  began 
to  appear  the  more  philosophical  optimism  of  the  present  day. 

It  was  at  first  very  largely  theological  in  its  character. 
Campanella,  among  his  many  paradoxical  opinions,  had  al- 
ready broached  several  optimistic  views ;  that  God  is  the  source 
of  right  and  wrong ;  that  evil  is  a  mere  negation,  and  ever 
overruled  as  an  occasion  of  good ;  that  famine  promotes  emi- 
gration, wars  destroy  tyrannies  and  heresies,  and  the  worst 
crimes  may  benefit  society ;  and  that  even  error  provokes  the 
search  for  truth,  and  sin  itself  is  but  ignorance.  Leibnitz,  the 
founder  of  modern  optimism,  in  his  Theodicea,  maintained 
that  an  infinitely  wise  and  good  God  could  not  but  select  the 
best  of  all  possible  worlds  for  creation,  that  evil  is  a  necessary 
imperfection  of  the  creature,  and  in  different  grades  of  crea- 
tures the  means  to  a  higher  good.  Bishop  Butler,  whilst 
holding  that  none  of  the  attempted  solutions  of  the  problem  of 
evil  are  adequate,  admitted  that  the  virtue  and  happiness  of 
creatures  must  be  the  chief  end  of  a  wise  and  good  Creator, 
though  the  best  means  to  the  attainment  of  that  end  may  not 
as  yet  be  comprehensible.  President  Jonathan  Edwards  taught 
that  the  end  for  which  the  world  was  created,  was  the  divine 
glory  which  would  be  illustrated  by  the  perdition  of  sinners, 
no  less  than  the  redemption  of  saints.     Many  other  divines 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Cosmology.  275 

have  associated  orthodoxy  with  the  notion  that  creation  itself 
is  a  degradation,  a  faUing  short  of  the  infinite,  and  that  there 
must,  therefore,  be  a  minimum  of  evil  in  all  finite  creatures,  as 
they  could  no  more  be  infinite  in  holiness  than  in  power  or 
wisdom. 

But  the  modern  forms  of  optimism  have  become  much  more 
metaphysical.  The  spirit  of  Leibnitz  prevailed  largely  in 
German  thought  till  the  time  of  Hegel,  who  held  that  what- 
ever is,  is  rational;  that  the  development  of  the  infinite  is  logi- 
cal, and  the  goal  of  the  process  a  triumph  of  absolute  reason. 
Cousin,  on  the  basis  of  the  Hegelian  metaphysic,  maintained 
the  whole  history  of  philosophy  and  humanity  to  be  ra- 
tional, defended  war  as  the  necessary  conflict  of  ideas,  and 
argued  that  truth  and  right  were  always  victorious  over  wrong 
and  error;  while  Blasche  and  Rosenkrans  have  gone  to  the 
length  of  maintaining  that  evil  itself  is  but  the  necessary  con- 
trast of  good.  The  Italian  Catholic  metaphysicians,  Rosmini, 
Gioberti  and  Mamiani,  have  repeatedly  maintained  that  the 
Creator  cannot  but  produce  the  best  possible  worlds,  as  from 
a  casket  of  golden  coins  can  only  be  drawn  golden  coins ;  that 
the  development  of  nature,  mind,  and  religion  itself,  is  logical ; 
and  that  evil  ever  diminishes  as  the  finite  approaches  the  infi- 
nite, in  the  progressive  union  of  which  the  creation  finds  its 
highest  end. 

At  length,  however,  the  most  recent  optimism  has  been  forced 
into  an  apologetic  position.  The  rise  of  subtle  forms  of  pes- 
simism in  Germany  has  provoked  attacks  upon  their  meta- 
physical premises.  I.  A.  Fichte,  in  his  Theistic  View  of  the 
World,  endeavors  to  vindicate  a  true  optimism  against  modern 
pessimism,  by  tracing  the  root  of  evil  to  the  necessary  inde- 
pendence and  possible  degeneracy  of  creatures,  and  by  showing 
its  perfect  remedy  through  a  general  and  special  Providence. 
Dr.  Volkelt,  in  his  studies  on  the  Philosophy  of  the  Uncon- 
scious, traces  the  recent  pessimism  to  the  Hegelian  doctrine 
of  universal  development  through  contradictions,  the  negative 
and  positive  sides  of  which  have  been  produced  by  Shopen- 
hauer,  with  his  doctrine  of  absolute  will,  and  Hartmann,  with 
his  doctrine  of  co-ordinate  will  and  reason,  and  then  brought 
into  full  consciousness  by  Bahnsen,  with  his  doctrine  of  con- 


276  Tlic  Schism  in  Mctapliysics.  [part  i. 

flicting  will  and  reason.  Dr.  Weygoldt,  in  his  Prize  Essay  on 
the  same  subject,  refers  the  pessimism  of  the  age  to  political 
discontent,  the  decay  of  religious  faith  and  hope,  and  gener- 
ally the  conflict  of  the  actual  with  an  ideal  society  as  ag-gra- 
vated  in  some  individuals  by  abnormal  melancholy,  and  in- 
sists that  its  metaphysical  arguments  are  a  mere  reasoning  in 
a  circle,  while  its  ideal  future  can  only  be  fulfilled  by  a  sound 
optimism. 

According  to  the  pessimists,  however,  the  existing  is  the 
worst  possible  world.  And  the  opinion  is  of  ancient  as  well 
as  modern  growth.  The  Hindoo  mind,  for  ages,  had  looked 
upon  existence  itself  as  guilt,  upon  the  universe  as  an  illusion 
or  abortion,  and  upon  re-absorption  in  Brahma  or  annihila- 
tion in  Nirwana,  as  the  only  boon  of  mortals,  to  be  reached 
after  thousands  of  successive  births  and  deaths.  The  Greek 
and  Roman  Epicureans  endeavored  to  drown  the  thought  of 
a  causeless  and  purposeless  universe  in  sensual  pleasure.  It 
is  claimed  by  modern  pessimists  that  the  highest  wisdom  of 
the  Hebrews  was  expressed  in  the  dirges  of  Job  and  Solomon 
on  the  misery  and  vanity  of  life,  and  that  Christianity  itself, 
through  its  doctrine  of  sin,  had  produced  a  breach  between 
God  and  the  world,  requiring  the  destruction  of  the  latter  as 
vain  and  worthless.  And  though  the  fathers,  excepting  the 
Manichaeans,  had  taken  a  more  optimistic  view  of  the  origin 
and  object  of  creation,  yet  among  the  scholastics  and  reformers, 
the  gloomier  dogmas  of  the  Church  were  sometimes  pushed 
toward  that  pessimistic  extreme  which  the  skeptical  literature 
and  poetry  have  since  developed.  Voltaire  opened  the  move- 
ment with  his  satire  upon  the  optimism  of  Leibnitz.  Byron 
gave  voice  to  the  rising  tendency  in  his  Childe  Harold  and  Cain ; 
Shelley  in  his  Queen  Mab  and  Prometheus;  and  Goethe  in  his 
P'aust;  with  occasional  echoes  in  Tennyson.Thackeray  and  Mat- 
thew Arnold.  But  at  length  it  has  reached  full  metaphysical  ex- 
pression as  one  of  the  latest  results  of  German  thought.  Kant 
may  be  said  to  have  taken  the  first  step  when  he  undermined 
the  theistic  arguments,  especially  the  teleological,  and  urged 
that  no  theodicea  was  tenable.  Hegel  may  have  unwittingly 
admitted  a  pessimistic  element  into  his  theory  of  the  world,  by 
dwelling  upon  the  contradictions,  struggles  and  sorrows  of 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Cosmology.  277 

the  whole  finite  development  of  the  absolute  reason.  Shop- 
enhauer,  the  founder  of  modern  pessimism,  consistently  with 
his  atheistic  idealism,  then  represented  the  Kantian  noumenon 
as  the  will,  and  accepted  the  world  as  a  mere  visionary  phe- 
nomenon of  blind  universal  force,  without  rational  cause  or 
purpose,  and  only  worthy,  therefore,  of  a  sort  of  conscious 
annihilation,  or  continuance  under  protest.  Hartmann,  com- 
bining Shopenhauer  with  Hegel,  now  finds  the  root  of  the 
world  in  unconscious  force  and  reason,  with  the  latter  tri- 
umphing over  the  former  throughout  nature  and  history,  and 
ending  in  a  sort  of  ultimate  redemption,  which  serves  only  to 
alleviate  individual  misery,  with  illusive  strivings  after  a  happi- 
ness unattainable  in  this  life  or  in  the  next.  Julius  Bahnsen, 
defiantly  advancing  with  Hegel  beyond  both  Shopenhauer  and 
Hartmann,  declares  that  the  conflict  of  reason  and  force  is  both 
universal  and  irreconcilable,  that  absolute  purposelessness 
reigns  in  the  midst  of  apparent  manifold  design,  and  that  one 
world-period  logically  follows  another  only  as  a  corpse  breeds 
vermin,  making  life  a  hell  from  which  there  is  no  outlet,  and 
dull  resignation  the  only  philosophy. 

In  the  third  and  last  stage  of  separation  we  now  find  a 
metaphysic  asserting  its  independence  of  all  revealed  religion. 
In  some  of  the  earlier  ontological  speculations  it  may  have 
been  both  convenient  and  reverent  to  use  such  technical  terms 
as  the  Absolute,  the  Infinite,  the  First  Cause,  instead  of  the 
sacred  names  of  God  employed  in  common  life  and  worship ; 
and  there  may  have  been  a  great  advantage  in  protecting  the 
metaphysical  as  well  as  physical  sciences  from  the  encroach- 
ments of  rash  theologians  who  were  in  haste  to  attribute  di- 
vine intentions  in  nature  and  history  which  are  unfounded 
and  misleading.  But  a  class  of  metaphysicians  has  arisen 
who  would  evaporate  the  Absolute  and  Infinite  into  mere  ab- 
stractions or  impersonal  powers,  with  no  correspondent  divine 
realities,  and  who  will  not  admit  into  the  obscure  province  of 
metaphysics  any  light  of  revelation  concerning  the  nature  of 
the  First  Cause  and  the  course  and  object  of  the  universe, 
about  which  they  speculate  so  freely.  The  imposing  theories 
of  the  world  which  have  followed  one  another  in  the  schools 
of  Germany,  from  Kant  to  Hartmann,  are  but  so  many  vain 


278  TJie  Schism  in  Metaphysics.  [part  i. 

attempts  to  solve  the  most  peculiar  problems  of  revealed  cos- 
mology, or,  as  Hegel  himself  expressed  it,  to  re-think  the 
whole  thought  of  the  Creator  through  all  the  logical  categories 
of  His  creative  process.  And  this  unphilosophical  exclusion 
of  the  chief  source  of  true  metaphysical  knowledge  has  be- 
come conscious  and  avowed  in  the  schools  of  Comte  and 
Spencer,  whose  principles  would  render  any  divine  revelation 
of  the  Absolute  Cause  of  the  universe  simply  inconceivable 
and  impossible.  Especially  is  it  shown  by  those  discursive 
scientists  who,  without  calling  themselves  metaphysicians,  are 
indulging  in  the  freest  speculations  upon  the  origin  of  life,  and 
mind,  and  design  in  nature.  Sir  William  Thomson  seems  to 
have  illustrated  it,  either  ironically  or  unwittingly,  in  his  Presi- 
dential Address  at  Edinburgh,  when  he  proposed  to  explain 
the  first  appearance  of  living  germs  upon  our  earth,  without 
invoking  an  abnormal  act  of  Creative  Power,  by  referring  them 
to  life -bearing  meteors  which  had  brought  them  from  other 
planets.  Professor  Tyndall,  in  his  Belfast  Address,  after 
sketching  the  evolution  of  all  animate  nature  and  human  con- 
sciousness from  primitive  atoms  as  the  seeds  of  things,  termed 
the  whole  process,  the  manifestation  of  an  absolutely  inscrut- 
able Power,  and  discarded  the  theory  of  a  Creator  as  that  of 
a  mere  man-like  artificer.  Professor  Huxley,  in  his  Evidence 
of  Man's  Place  in  Nature,  holds  to  a  similar  great  natural  pro- 
gression, without  any  intervention,  from  the  formless  to  the 
formed,  from  the  inorganic  to  the  organic,  from  blind  force  to 
conscious  intellect  and  will;  and  has  declared  that  the  doctrine 
of  natural  selection  gives  the  death-blow  to  teleology  by  re- 
quiring no  more  forethought  and  design  than  is  seen  when  the 
winds  of  the  Bay  of  Biscay  select  the  sands  from  the  plain,  or 
a  frosty  night  preserves  the  hardy  instead  of  the  tender  plants. 
And  Professor  Haeckel,  as  a  materialistic  monist,  in  his  Natu- 
ral History  of  the  Creation,  renouncing  the  theory  of  Agassiz  as 
but  the  absurd  anthropomorphic  doctrine  of  a  Creator,  declares 
that  the  forming  of  the  crystal,  the  flowering  of  the  plant,  the 
generation  of  animals  and  the  mental  activity  of  man,  are  alike 
due  to  mere  mechanical,  undesigning  causes,  and,  in  fact,  that 
in  the  so-called  economy  of  nature  no  such  thing  as  design  ex- 
ists, any  more  than  the  much  vaunted  goodness  of  the  Creator. 


CHAP.  III.]  Biblical  Cosmology.  279 

On  the  revealed  side  of  metaphysics,  meanwhile,  have  en- 
sued corresponding  departures  from  the  rational  theology  and 
true  theory  of  the  world.  In  the  first  and  legitimate  stage, 
efforts  were  made  to  extricate  revealed  divinity  from  the  false 
metaphysics  of  the  middle  ages.  Luther,  Melanchthon,  Cal- 
vin and  other  learned  reformers  led  the  way,  by  their  attempts 
to  reconstruct  theological  science  upon  a  strictly  scriptural 
basis,  free  from  patristic  and  scholastic  conceits  concerning 
the  mysteries  of  the  trinity,  the  creation  and  the  atonement. 
Buddeus  and  Mosheim  in  Germany,  and  Henry  More  and 
Cudworth  in  England,  followed  with  their  more  positive  ef- 
forts to  support  Christian  theism  with  the  metaphysical  prin- 
ciples which  the  new  Protestant  thought  was  developing.  Dr. 
Samuel  Clarke,  as  an  antagonist  of  Leibnitz,  sought  to  de- 
monstrate the  Divine  being  and  attributes  by  speculations 
upon  contingent  and  necessary  existence,  and  also  attempted 
a  metaphysical  explanation  of  the  Trinity.  Bishop  Butler,  in 
his  Analogy,  proposed  a  hypothetical  reconciliation  of  the  ar- 
ticles of  natural  religion  with  the  theory  of  universal  necessity, 
and  even  exhibited  the  great  central  doctrine  of  redemption  as 
but  the  highest  expression  of  divine  principles  pervading  all 
nature  and  society.  At  length  Dr.  Christian  Wolf  brought 
metaphysical  theology  to  a  crisis  with  his  attempt  to  resolve 
the  most  peculiar  doctrines  of  the  Christian  religion  into 
philosophical  tenets,  upheld  by  demonstrative  reasoning. 
And  since  then  each  succeeding  school  of  German  metaphy- 
sics has  had  its  wing  of  speculative  divines,  such  as  Schleier- 
macher,  Marheineke  and  the  younger  Fichte,  endeavoring  to 
identify  the  Absolute  as  Jehovah,  to  retrace  creation  as  a  logical 
process,  to  reconstruct  the  trinity  as  a  trilogy,  and  thus  estab- 
lish the  coincidence  of  the  rational  with  the  revealed  theology 
and  cosmology. 

At  the  same  time,  however,  by  the  great  mass  of  orthodox 
divines,  the  distinguishing  dogmas  of  revealed  religion,  the 
trinity,  creation,  providence  and  redemption,  are  still  held  in 
their  traditional  form,  with  little  or  no  reference  to  recent 
speculations  upon  the  origin,  course  and  destiny  of  absolute 
being.  As  to  the  trinity,  the  patristic  and  scholastic  defini- 
tions remain  substantially  unchanged.     The    Greek   Church 


28o  The  Schism  in  Metaphysics.  [part  i. 

still  adheres  to  the  Nicaean  and  Constantinopolitan  decrees, 
that  there  are  three  persons  in  one  Divine  being,  the  Father, 
the  Son  and  the  Holy  Ghost;  that  the  Son  is  of  the  same, 
and  not  merely  of  like  essence  with  the  Father,  and  that  the 
Holy  Spirit  proceeds  from  the  Father  alone.  The  Roman  and 
Anglican  Churches  retain  the  same  symbol,  with  the  added 
clause,  "  filioque,"  adopted  by  the  third  synod  of  Toledo,  de- 
claring that  the  Holy  Spirit  proceeds  from  the  Father  "and 
the  Son."  The  principal  American  Churches  also  hold  the 
trinity,  and  it  still  characterizes  the  whole  Christian  world 
with  the  exception  of  the  Unitarian  bodies  which  have  revived 
the  opinions  of  Arius  and  Socinus,  that  Christ  is  but  the  no- 
blest of  creatures,  or  a  mere  man,  and  the  followers  of  Swe- 
denborg  and  Zinzendorf,  who  have  departed  from  the  tradi- 
tional view  of  the  relationship  of  the  three   divine  persons. 

As  to  the  dogmas  of  creation  and  providence,  a  like  agree- 
ment prevails.  Greek  and  Roman  authorities  still  follow  the 
fathers  and  schoolmen  in  maintaining  that  God,  the  Father 
Almighty,  has  created  the  world  from  nothing,  through  the 
Son,  as  His  expressed  reason  or  logos;  that  the  creation,  as  it 
came  from  His  hand,  was  perfect  and  pure,  and  that  by  the 
sin  of  the  creature  alone  it  was  marred  and  perverted,  a^d  not 
through  any  mere  necessary  defect  or  privation  without  moral 
quality.  The  Reformed  Churches  seem  to  have  only  em- 
phasized such  views  of  the  creation,  and  re-defined  with  more 
clearness  the  doctrine  of  Providence  as  being  a  continued 
manifestation  of  the  triune  Jehovah  in  the  preservation  and 
government  of  the  world,  both  general  and  special,  consist- 
ently with  occasional  miraculous  suspension  of  natural  laws, 
as  well  as  with  the  freedom  and  responsibility  of  the  human 
will.  As  to  the  doctrine  of  redemption,  there  is  scarcely  less 
agreement  among  orthodox  divines.  While  some  may  dis- 
tinguish the  divine  glory,  and  others  human  happiness  as  the 
end  or  design  of  the  Father  in  creation,  all  concur  that  both 
objects  are  achieved  through  the  incarnation,  atonement  and 
ascension  of  the  Son,  and  by  the  ministiy  of  the  Holy  Spirit, 
and  that  the  great  consummation  will  involve  the  abolition  of 
sin  and  death  and  the  regeneration  of  man  and  nature. 

In  the  third   schismatic  stage  we   now  behold   a  biblical 


CHAP.  III.]  Biblical  Cosniology.  281 

cosmology,  which  seeks  to  exclude  from  itself  all  metaphysi- 
cal science  as  profane  and  worthless.  At  the  dawn  of  the 
great  reformation  of  religion  it  was  not  strange  that  zealous 
evangelists,  like  Spener  and  Wesley,  should  prefer  practical 
piety  to  a  mere  speculative  orthodoxy ;  nor  indeed  is  it  now 
surprising  that  godly  divines,  such  as  Tholuck  and  Hodge, 
should  be  jealous  of  an  excessively  metaphysical  discussion  of 
theological  problems  as  tending  to  arid  intellectualism  or  ra- 
tionalism. But  there  is  a  class  of  biblical  cosmogonists  or 
theological  world-builders  who  would  neither  allow  the  legiti- 
mate exercise  of  the  speculative  propensity  upon  the  problem 
of  the  universe,  nor  seek  to  meet  its  cravings  with  that  solu- 
tion afforded  by  divine  revelation.  Though  their  own  theolo- 
gies and  theodiceas  are  based  upon  metaphysical  principles, 
derived  from  pagan  as  well  as  Christian  sources ;  though 
school  after  school  of  thinkers  have  been  waging  logical  war- 
fare around  them  like  the  battles  of  giants  ;  and  though  at 
length  has  been  elaborated  that  ideal  of  an  Infinite  and  Abso- 
lute Reason  per\'ading  nature  and  history,  which  can  only  be 
realized  in  the  triune  Jehovah,  who  is  Maker,  Saviour  and 
Judge  of  the  World,  yet  they  are  content  still  to  represent  the 
Creator  as  a  wearied  artificer,  resting  from  His  work,  the  crea- 
tion as  a  mechanism  with  which  He  constantly  interferes,  and 
the  creature  as  an  anomaly  in  His  creation. 

And  thus  the  metaphysical  sciences,  as  torn  asunder  by  the 
indifferent  spirit,  would  either,  on  the  rational  side,  relapse  to 
mere  godless  abstractions,  or  on  the  revealed  side,  shrivel  into 
lifeless  dogmas. 

The  General  Rupture  in  Philosophy. 

Mounting  at  length  above  the  sciences  into  that  lofty  region 
of  Philosophy,  where  they  are  themselves  to  be  studied  in  the 
pure  light  of  reflection,  we  shall  discover  the  two  antagonists 
propounding  opposite  theories  of  knowledge,  like  high  con- 
tracting sovereigns,  with  their  distant  armies  encamped  in  full 
view. 

On  the  rational  side  of  philosophy,  as  in  each  science,  may  be 
traced  a  gradual  severance  of  reason  from  revelation,  the  chief 
source  of  divine  knowledge.     In  the  first  of  the  three  stages 


282  Tlic  Rupture  in  Philosophy.  [part  i. 

came  the  legitimate  rise  of  free  thought  against  a  false  revela- 
tion, against  the  pretended  infallible  teaching  of  the  Roman 
Church.  It  was  the  time  when  the  human  intellect  was  break- 
ing from  the  shackles  of  priestly  authority  and  asserting  its  claim 
to  the  whole  domain  of  research.  As  early  as  the  fourteenth 
century  Roger  Bacon,  the  prophet  and  proto-martyr  of  Chris- 
tian philosophy,  had  issued  his  "  Great  Work  on  the  Utility  of 
the  Sciences,"  projecting  a  chart  of  all  future  knowledge,  quite 
ahead  of  his  age,  and  exposing  the  existing  causes  of  human 
ignorance,  such  as  authority,  custom,  prejudice  and  conceit, 
only  himself  to  fall  a  victim  to  their  malignity.  Marsilio  Fi- 
cino,  the  scholar  of  the  classical  revival,  with  the  help  of  the 
Greek  Pletho  and  Cardinal  Bessarion  and  under  the  patronage 
of  the  Medici,  had  introduced  from  Constantinople,  through 
the  Florentine  Academy  into  Western  Europe,  that  elegant 
literature  which  was  destined  to  become  the  chief  instrument 
of  modern  philosophical  culture.  Theophrastus  Paracelsus, 
as  the  pioneer  of  philosophical  mysticism,  had  claimed  that 
faculty  of  universal  insight,  which  was  yet  to  find  its  bloom 
in  Swedenborg.  Michel  Montaigne,  as  the  pioneer  of  philo- 
sophical scepticism,  had  raised  that  spirit  of  universal  doubt, 
which  was  yet  to  come  to  its  crisis  in  Hume.  Pierre  La 
Ramee,  the  logical  iconoclast,  had  assailed  the  idolatry  of 
Aristotle  with  his  "  New  Dialectic,"  and  led  the  way  to  that 
more  natural  process  of  reason  which  the  later  logic  has  ma- 
tured. Thomas  Campanella,  the  immediate  forerunner  of  Ba- 
con, had  already  issued  his  "  Precursor  of  Restored  Philoso- 
phy," boldly  summoning  his  age  from  the  logomachy  of  the 
schools  to  the  fresh  study  of  nature.  Francis  Bacon,  the 
father  of  modern  empiricism,  in  his  "  Great  Restoration  of  the 
Sciences,"  then  dealt  the  fatal  blows  at  those  illusive  preju- 
dices in  the  race,  in  the  individual,  in  common  life,  and  among 
the  learned,  the  idols  of  the  Tribe,  the  Den,  the  Market  and 
the  Theatre,  which  had  so  long  been  obstructing  the  advance- 
ment of  knowledge;  and  at  the  same  time,  with  his  new  logic, 
prescribed  the  method  of  that  natural  philosophy  which  Co- 
pernicus, Galileo  and  Kepler  were  already  practising.  Rene 
Descartes,  the  father  of  modern  transcendentalism,  soon  fol- 
lowing with  his  "  Discourse  on  the  Right  Conduct  of  Reason 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Knoivlcdge.  283 

in  the  Sciences,"  premised  the  mental  and  moral  rules  of  all 
sound  investigation  and,  with  self-consciousness  as  his  only- 
guide,  entered  the  realms  of  metaphysical  philosophy,  fol- 
lowed by  Malebranche,  Spinoza  and  Leibnitz.  Jean  D'Alem- 
bert,  the  first  modern  encyclopaedist  of  the  physical  sciences, 
organized  them  in  the  celebrated  French  Dictionary,  accord- 
ing to  the  classification  of  Bacon,  and  lucidly  discussed  their 
order,  method  and  connection,  as  unfolded  by  the  great  leaders 
who  have  successively  seized  and  transmitted  the  torch  of 
knowledge.  Christian  Wolf,  the  first  modern  encyclopaedist 
of  the  metaphysical  sciences,  systematized  the  fragmentary 
teachings  of  Leibnitz  and  formulated  the  abstruse  problems  of 
ontology,  cosmology  and  psychology,  which  had  been  passing^ 
unsolved,  through  the  schools.  Thomas  Reid,  the  protestant 
of  common  sense,  now  recalled  philosophy  for  a  moment  from 
the  vagaries  into  which  it  had  been  led  by  Berkeley  and  Hume. 
Immanuel  Kant,  the  unrivalled  critic  of  human  reason,  then 
achieved  a  Copernican  revolution  in  philosophy,  by  supposing 
that  the  mind  moulds  the  world  as  well  as  the  world  the 
mind  in  the  process  of  knowledge,  and  thus  started  that  two- 
fold movement  which  has  issued  in  the  idealism  of  Fichte, 
Schelling  and  Hegel,  and  the  realism  of  Herbart,  Beneke  and 
Lotze.  George  Wilhelm  Friedrich  Hegel,  the  most  subtle 
spirit  of  our  epoch,  at  the  summit  of  the  idealistic  movement, 
projected  his  magnificent  "  Encyclopaedia  of  the  Philosophical 
Sciences,"  embracing  Logic,  Nature  and  Spirit,  Art,  Religion 
and  Philosophy,  in  one  consummate  system  of  absolute  know- 
ledge. Auguste  Comte,  the  modern  Bacon,  at  the  opposite 
extreme  of  empiricisni,  attempted  a  similar  "  Philosophy  of 
the  Positive  Sciences,"  reducing  them  to  an  historic  series  and 
announcing  their  methods,  limits  and  laws.  And  more  re- 
cently hosts  of  other  great  thinkers  from  various  schools, 
such  as  Cousin,  Littre  and  Janet,  Mill,  Lewes  and  Spencer, 
Ferrier,  Calderwood  and  Fraser,  Hickok,  Seelye  and  Krauth, 
Trendelcnberg,  Ueberweg  and  Ulrici,  have  been  pouring  forth 
the  most  abundant  materials  for  that  one  ultimate  philosophy 
or  science  of  sciences,  which  is  yet  to  be  collected  out  of  the 
sciences  themselves,  considered  as  intellectual  phenomena, 
subject  to  logical  and  historical  laws. 


284  The  Rupture  in  Philosophy.  [part  i. 

Meanwhile,  however,  the  next  stage  of  departure  appeared 
thronged  with  mere  speculative  philosophers,  utterly  ignor- 
ing that  true  revealed  knowledge  which  still  remained  unim- 
peached.  These,  instead  of  the  doctrines  of  the  inspiration, 
illumination  and  fulfilment  of  Scripture,  substituted  their  va- 
rious conflicting  hypotheses  concerning  the  origin,  the  method, 
and  the  goal  of  science,  or  true  philosophical  knowledge. 
As  to  the  first  problem,  the  origin  of  science,  there  arose 
the  two  rival  schools  of  idealists  and  realists.  According  to 
the  former,  our  knowledge  embraces  mere  ideas.  And  the 
opinion  was  one  which  had  been  long  and  widely  prevalent. 
The  entire  oriental  mind,  for  ages,  had  been  idealistic.  The 
Hindoos  of  old  had  mused  upon  the  world  as  but  a  vast  illu- 
sion or  dream  of  Brahma.  The  Greeks  had  looked  upon  all 
visible  things  as  but  unreal  images,  shadows,  copies  of  origi- 
nal, essential  archetypes,  after  which  they  had  been  fashioned. 
The  fathers,  Justin,  Origen,  Clement,  who  espoused  the  Pla- 
tonic doctrine  of  divine  ideas,  had  conceived  of  the  whole  in- 
telligible creation  as  only  a  manifestation  of  the  eternal  Logos, 
the  embodied  reason  or  word  of  God.  The  schoolmen, 
who  adopted  the  Aristotelian  distinction  between  the  form 
and  matter  of  objects,  had  even  discussed  their  external  exist- 
ence as  problematical  (especially  in  the  Eucharist)  but  for  the 
authority  of  the  Church.  The  Platonic  reformers,  who  re- 
vived classical  with  sacred  learning,  had  striven  to  enlist  such 
spiritual  conceptions  in  the  service  of  pure  religion.  And 
gradually,  with  the  rise  of  philosophic  thought,  came  more 
scientific  phases  of  the   same   tendency. 

The  first  was  theistic,  restricting  our  knowledge  to  di- 
vine ideas.  Descartes,  the  acknowledged  father  of  modern 
idealism,  led  the  way  by  describing  ideas  as  mere  mental  re- 
presentations of  material  objects,  excited  in  the  mind  on  occa- 
sion of  the  senses  by  immediate  concourse  or  assistance  of 
Deity,  whose  veracity  must  guarantee  their  accuracy.  Male- 
branche,  as  a  disciple  of  Descartes,  in  his  "Search  for  Truth," 
then  added  the  celebrated  theory  of  Vision  in  God,  according 
to  which  material  objects,  as  impressed  upon  the  senses,  are 
represented  in  the  divine  mind  and  beheld  by  our  minds  as  in 
a  perpetual  theophany  or  divine  phantasmagoria,  attested  by  the 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Knozi'lcdge.  285 

Holy  Scriptures  and  the  Catholic  Church.  John  Norris,  an 
English  rector,  who  had  studied  Plato  as  well  as  Descartes 
and  Malebranche,  followed  with  his  "  Theory  of  the  Ideal  or 
Intelligible  World,"  in  which  the  vulgar  belief  in  material  ob- 
jects, as  distinguished  from  their  mental  representations,  was 
based  upon  the  mere  veracity  of  God,  their  creator  and  con- 
stant revealer.  At  length  Arthur  Collier,  a  recluse  thinker 
who  held  the  parish  next  to  that  of  Norris,  repudiating  the 
appeals  to  common  sense  and  Church  authority  as  unphilo- 
sophical,  boldly  pushed  theistic  idealism  to  a  climax  wilh  his 
"Clavis  Universalis  or  New  Inquiry  after  Truth,  being  a 
Demonstration  of  the  Impossibility  of  an  External  World,"  or, 
as  he  elsewhere  expressed  it,  of  the  dependent  existence  of  the 
visible  world,  or  of  the  inexistence  of  the  sensible  world  in  the 
mind  of  man,  and  of  the  inexistence  of  the  mind  of  man  in 
Christ,  and  of  Christ  in  God,  the  source  of  all  thought  and 
being.  And  these  different  views,  as  we  shall  see,  were  vari- 
ously applied  to  the  problems  of  Holy  Scripture  by  such  ideal- 
ists as  Arnauld,  Nicole  and  Crousaz. 

The  next  phase  of  the  same  tendency  was  a  phenom- 
enal idealism,  which  would  restrict  our  knowledge  to  mere 
phenomena  or  ideal  qualities.  Locke,  with  all  his  real- 
ism, had  retained  several  idealistic  elements,  such  as  his  ridi- 
cule of  a  substance  supporting  qualities,  like  the  fabled  ele- 
phant upholding  the  world ;  his  assertion  that  the  secondary 
qualities,  heat,  color,  sound  do  not  exist  in  material  objects, 
but  only  in  the  percipient  mind  ;  his  definition  of  knowledge, 
as  maintained  only  through  the  interv^ention  of  ideas  and 
measured  by  their  conformity  with  realities ;  and  his  admis- 
sion that  the  existence  of  things  out  of  the  mind,  though  cer- 
tain enough,  does  not  allow  of  demonstration.  Richard  Bur- 
thogge,  a  physician  who  corresponded  with  Locke,  seems  to 
have  controverted  or  developed  some  of  his  views  in  an  "  Es- 
say on  Human  Reason,"  in  which  he  maintained  that  things 
are  nothing  to  us  but  as  they  are  known  by  us,  neither  their 
accidents  nor  their  substances  having  any  more  being  out  of 
our  minds  than  shadows  in  the  water,  or  behind  a  glass  do 
really  exist  where  they  appear.  Berkeley,  the  spiritualistic 
idealist,  advancing  beyond  Locke,  then  demolished,  with  vigo- 


286  The  Ritptiire  in  Philosophy.  [part  i. 

ous  argument,  the  material  substances  which  he  had  simply- 
ridiculed,  claimed  as  purely  ideal  the  material  qualities,  some 
of  which  he  had  already  conceded  to  the  percipient  mind,  ex- 
ploded the  very  notion  of  matter  as  a  mere  fiction  of  philoso- 
phers, and  thus  left  nothing  existing  but  minds  and  their  ideas, 
or  spiritual  substances  and  their  perceived  phenomena,  upheld 
by  the  divine  mind  or  spiritual  divine  substance.  At  length 
Hume,  the  sceptical  idealist,  as  if  to  bring  phenomenalism  to 
a  crisis,  advancing  beyond  Berkeley,  with  subtle  logic  assailed 
the  remaining  spiritual  substances,  which  he  had  left  exposed; 
exploded  the  essential  notion  of  mind  as  no  less  fictitious  than 
that  of  matter,  of  God  as  no  less  fictitious  than  that  of  the 
soul ;  left  nothing  existing  but  unsupported  phenomena  or  as- 
sociated ideas,  both  causeless  and  aimless,  and  thus  unsettled 
the  entire  fabric  of  human  knowledge. 

But  the  final  phase  has  been  an  egoistic  idealism,  which 
would  restrict  our  knowledge  to  sheer  self-consciousness. 
Kant,  the  transcendental  idealist,  spurning  common  sense  as 
the  scandal  of  philosophy,  in  his  "  Critique  of  the  Pure  Rea- 
son," had  not  only  distinguished  between  phenomena  and 
noumena,  or  between  things  as  they  appear  to  us  and  things 
as  they  are  in  themselves,  but  had  referred  their  forms  and 
qualities  to  the  concipient  mind  alone,  denying  external  reality 
even  to  space,  time  and  causality,  as  well  as  the  ideas  of  God, 
the  soul  and  the  world.  Fichte,  the  subjective  idealist,  as  an 
advanced  disciple  of  Kant,  in  his  "Doctrine  of  Science,"  then 
discarded  from  scientific  knowledge  the  unknown  noumena  or 
things-in-themselves  as  no  more  proven  than  the  ideas  of  pure 
reason;  distinguished  consciousness  into  subject  and  object, 
and  developed  the  entire  objective  world  of  the  mind  out  of 
its  own  subjective  forms  and  categories  as  a  product  of  spon- 
taneous intelligence.  Schelling,  the  objective  idealist,  as  an 
advanced  disciple  of  Fichte,  with  his  essays  on  "The  Ego  as 
the  Principle  of  Philosophy,"  and  his  "Soul  of  the  World," 
proceeded  to  unite  the  objective  and  subjective  factors  of  con- 
sciousness in  an  absolute  ego  or  original  mind,  like  our  own, 
intuitively  discerned  as  unconscious  in  nature,  conscious  in 
man,  and  self-conscious  in  art,  the  realized  ideal  of  nature. 
Hegel,  the  absolute  idealist,  as  a  consistent  disciple  of  Fichte 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Knotvlcdge.  287 

and  Schelling,  in  his  "Science  of  Logic,"  then  maintained  the 
absolute  mind  to  be  supremely  rational,  even  dialectical  in  its 
evolution,  and  logically  traced  that  evolution  from  the  notion 
of  nothingness  into  the  categories  of  being,  through  the  stadia 
of  nature  and  the  stages  of  spirit,  up  to  the  abstract  thought 
of  man,  the  flower  and  image  of  reason.  At  length  Shopen- 
hauer,  the  theoretical  idealist,  discarding  Fichte,  Schellino-  and 
Hegel,  and  starting  afresh  from  Kant,  as  if  to  push  the  ego- 
istic idealism  to  the  verge  of  lunacy,  in  his  treatise  on  "  The 
World  as  Will  and  Notion,"  maintained  the  conscious  will  or 
developed  force  of  the  man  to  be  the  true  noumenon  or  real 
cause  of  the  whole  phenomenal  ego,  and  represented  the  entire 
world  of  that  ego,  with  its  conceived  earth,  sun  and  stars,  as  a 
mere  product  of  the  brain,  and  doomed  to  perish  with  it  when 
the  will  that  uses  it  shall  relapse  to  blind  primordial  force  and 
nothingness,  as  the  bubble  reflects  the  heavens  only  to  melt 
back  into  the  sea.  And  thus,  at  the  idealistic  extreme,  our 
knowledge  would  appear  little  better  than  the  dream  of  a 
dream. 

According  to  the  realists,  however,  our  knowledge  embraces 
pure  realities.  And  this  opinion  was  almost  as  ancient  and 
extensive  as  the  other.  The  whole  occidental  mind,  for  cen- 
turies, had  been  becoming  realistic.  The  Hebrew,  in  his  reli- 
gious realism,  had  worshipped  Jehovah  as  the  living  God  who 
made  heaven  and  earth.  The  Roman,  in  his  political  realism, 
believed  himself  to  have  conquered  all  ideas,  nay,  the  very 
gods  themselves,  with  his  invincible  legions.  The  Latin 
fathers,  such  as  Tertullian,  in  their  crude  realism,  unable  to 
conceive  anything  real  which  was  not  material,  had  attributed 
a  refined  corporeity  to  spirits,  to  the  Deity  himself,  and  even 
sought  the  divine  image  in  the  human  body.  The  school- 
men, forbidden  even  to  think  of  a  mere  ideal  eucharist,  had 
cowered  before  the  mysteiy  of  transubstantiation  as  the  real 
body  and  blood  of  their  Lord.  Tlie  reformers,  in  their  revo- 
lutionary realism,  emancipating  the  human  mind  in  all  direc- 
tions, had  hurried  from  the  cloister  to  the  world,  to  life  and 
to  action.  And  by  degrees,  with  the  growth  of  empirical  re- 
search, followed  more  scientific  forms  of  the  same  tendency. 

The  first  was  a  materialistic  realism,  which  would  extend 


288  TJie  Rupture  in  Philosophy.  [part  i. 

our  knowledge  beyond  ideas  to  material  objects.  Bacon,  the 
father  of  modern  realism,  led  the  way,  with  his  love  of  the 
physical  sciences,  ever  appealing  from  ideas  to  facts,  things  and 
particulars.  -  Hobbes,  the  materialistic  realist,  as  a  discipl'e  of 
Bacon,  entering  the  mental  sciences,  grossly  conceived  of  minds 
as  mere  bodies,  impressing  each  other  with  ideas  which  were 
but  material  images,  reflected  like  pictures  in  a  mirror,  or  de- 
caying sensations,  remembered  like  the  echoes  of  a  harp 
Condillac,  Helvetius  and  Diderot,  successively  following 
Locke  away  from  Descartes  as  realists,  transformed  ideas  into 
sensations,  faculties  into  nerves,  mind  into  brain,  until  they 
had  merged  all  ideas  in  objects,  and  left  nothing  existing  but 
material  organisms  and  their  material  products,  machine  men 
and  their  manufactured  sensations. 

The  next  form  was  a  phenomenal  realism,  which  would  in- 
clude phenomena  as  real  qualities.  Andrew  Baxter,  the  first 
antagonist  of  Berkeley  and  the  first  of  the  Scottish  realists,  in 
his  "  Inquiry  into  the  Nature  of  the  Human  Soul,"  maintained 
it  to  be  a  plain  truth,  not  questionable,  without  violence  to 
reason,  that  we  perceive,  besides  our  own  sensations  and  ideas, 
their  external  objects  and  causes,  which  we  call  matter,  as  we 
know  a  picture  to  be  a  material  reality,  and  not  a  mere  mental 
image  or  reflected  likeness.  Reid,  the  so-called  natural  real- 
ist, having  become  entangled  in  Hume's  scepticism,  determined 
to  cut  the  knot  which  he  could  not  loose,  with  a  Scotch 
cleaver,  entitled  "An  Inquiry  into  the  Human  Mind  on  the 
Principles  of  Common  Sense,"  in  which  he  appealed  from 
philosophers  to  plain  men,  discarded  the  intervening  ideas  of 
the  former  and  accepted  the  direct  perceptions  of  the  latter, 
as  ever  suggesting  the  real  existence  of  external  objects,  with 
their  qualities,  both  primary  and  secondary,  and  as  affording 
the  only  trustworthy  foundations  of  human  knowledge. 
Stewart,  also  styled  a  natural  realist  by  Hamilton,  in  his  ele- 
gant "Philosophical  Essays,"  recast  and  embellished  the  crude 
realism  of  Reid  by  enunciating  the  axioms  of  common  sense 
as  fundamental  laws  of  human  belief,  and  distinguishing  among 
the  primary  qualities  of  matter  what  he  termed  its  mathemati- 
cal affections,  involving  real  externality,  space  and  time. 
Hamilton,  who  might  be  styled  a  critical  realist,  so  far  as  he 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Kiicnvlcdge.  289 

was  a  disciple  of  Reid,  vindicated  the  philosophy  of  common 
sense  with  exhaustive  erudition  and  acuteness  as  a  catholic 
realism  of  the  schools  no  less  than  the  vulgar  belief  of  man- 
kind ;  discriminated  and  defended  it  at  all  points  from  the  be- 
wildering phases  of  idealism,  and  expanded  it  so  as  to  include 
among  the  objective  realities,  immediately  perceived,  certain 
primary  and  secundo-primary  material  qualities,  such  as 
gravitation,  cohesion,  mobility,  situation,  figure,  extension,  to- 
gether with  their  implied  substratum.  Dr.  McCosh,  the  intui- 
tive realist,  advancing  beyond  Reid  and  Hamilton,  in  his  "  In- 
tuitions of  the  Mind,"  besides  analyzing  and  testing  anew  the 
primitive  cognitions,  beliefs  and  judgments,  may  be  said  to 
have  carried  phenomenal  realism  to  its  limit  by  maintaining 
that  we  cannot  know  qualities  without  knowing  substances, 
that  we  intuitively  know  both  spiritual  and  material  substances 
as  having  being,  power  and  permanence,  together  with  their 
other  respective  qualities ;  and,  in  fact,  that  the  very  distinc- 
tion between  qualities  and  substances,  phenomena  and  nou- 
mena,  things  as  they  appear  and  things  in  themselves,  is 
purely  fictitious  and  misleading.  And  these  opinions  were 
also  variously  held  and  applied  by  Buffier,  Collard,  Prevost. 
The  final  form  has  been  a  substantial  realism  which  would 
include  substances  or  noumena  as  realities.  Kant,  with  all  his 
idealism,  had  retained  several  realistic  elements,  such  as  his 
final  resort  to  common  sense,  under  the  name  of  practical  rea- 
son, for  the  objective  reality  of  God,  the  soul  and  the  world; 
his  assumption  that  noumena,  or  things-in-themselves,  have 
the  function  of  affecting  our  senses,  and  his  admission  that 
the  material  of  our  knowledge  comes  from  without  into  the 
mind,  to  be  worked  up  through  its  forms  and  categories. 
Herbart,  the  father  of  German  realism,  who  might  be  styled 
an  essential  realist,  wholly  discarding  the  idealistic  side  of 
Kant,  as  a  critic  of  Fichte  and  Schelling,  in  his  "  Introduction 
to  Philosophy,"  maintained  that  our  knowledge  is  derived 
from  experience;  that  the  forms  and  categories  are  given  us  by 
things  and  not  imposed  by  us  upon  them;  that  realities  are 
therefore  as  manifold  as  our  perceptions  ;  that  they  cluster  as 
simple  essences,  each  with  its  own  quality,  around  the  soul, 
which,  as  a  punctual  essence,  by  its  peculiar  quality,  ever  as- 


290  TJie  Rupture  in  Philosophy.  [part  i. 

serts  and  preserves  itself  among  them  according  to  the  rela- 
tive intensity  of  their  impressions;  that  ideas  thus  emerge  in 
consciousness,  in  a  more  or  less  contradictory  state;  and  that 
it  is  the  task  of  philosophy  to  elaborate  logically  and  mathe- 
matically the  conceptions  which  are  thus  formed  of  surround- 
ing realities.  Beneke,  who  might  be  styled  a  dynamic  realist, 
departing  from  Kant  with  Shopenhauer  beyond  Herbart,  in 
his  Theory  of  Knowledge  and  his  Groundwork  of  Metaphy- 
sics, held  that  true  knowledge,  both  as  to  matter  and  form, 
originates  wholly  in  experience;  that  it  embraces  noumena, or 
things  in  themselves ;  that  through  self-consciousness  or  inter- 
nal perception  we  can  thus  directly  know  the  noumenon  or 
real  nature  of  the  soul ;  that  we  knovv^  it  to  be  not  a  mere 
punctual  essence,  nor  yet  a  mere  blind  will,  but  an  intelligent 
activity  or  system  of  psychical  activities ;  that  we  may  also 
know  other  noumena  or  external  realities  under  the  phenome- 
nal world  around  us  so  far,  but  only  so  far,  as  they  are  psy- 
chically analogous  to  ourselves ;  and  that,  consequently,  our 
real  knowledge  must  decrease  as  we  descend  from  human 
souls,  through  the  scale  of  animal  instincts  and  vital  powers, 
to  the  mere  unintelligent  forces  of  inorganic  nature.  Her- 
mann Lotze,  who  might  be  styled  a  spiritualistic  realist,  uni- 
ting Herbart  and  Beneke  upon  the  basis  of  Leibnitz,  has  sug- 
gested, among  other  brilliant  conjectures  in  his  Metaphysic 
and  "  Microcosmos,"  that  knowledge  is  itself  a  real  process,  as 
may  be  seen  in  the  development  of  perceived  colors  out  of 
etherial  vibrations;  that  all  phenomena  thus  spring  from  the 
interaction  and  passion  of  percipient  noumena,  living  atoms  or 
monads ;  that  even  the  lowest  monads,  the  material  elements, 
have  feeling,  and  that  the  scale  of  animated  nature  embraces 
infinite  myriads  of  conscious  beings  in  a  telcological  series, 
terminating  and  subsisting  in  God,  the  only  absolute  Person. 
Coleridge  seems  prophetically  to  have  sung  of  such  a  Being,  as 

"  Thai  one,  all  conscious  Spirit,  which  informs 
With  absolute  ubiquity  of  thought 
All  His  involved  monads,  that  yet  seem 
With  various  province  and  apt  agency 
Each  to  pursue  his  own  self-centering  end : 
Some  nurse  the  infant  diamond  in  the  mine ; 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Knozvlcdge.  291 

Some  roll  the  genial  juices  through  the  oak; 
Some  drive  the  mutinous  clouds  to  clash  in  air. 
And,  rushing  on  the  storm  with  whirlwind  speed, 
Yoke  the  red  lightning  to  their  volleying  car." 

Dr.  Gustav  Fechner,  the  distinguished  physicist  and  critic  of 
Hegel  and  Herbart,  though  an  ideahst  of  the  ideahsts  on  one 
side  of  his  system,  would  seem  to  have  become  on  the  other 
side  a  realist  of  the  realists,  beyond  Herbart,  Beneke  or  Lotze, 
by  arguing  in  his  "Atomology"  and  "Psycho-physics,"  that 
phenomena  are  only  produced  and  upheld  by  souls  in  their 
mutual  self-manifestation;  that  souls  thus  manifest  themselves 
through  phenomenal  bodies,  composed  of  spaceless  atoms; 
and  that  such  souls  subsist  throughout  organic  nature,  not 
only  in  plants,  animals  and  men,  but  with  magnified  propor- 
tions in  the  celestial  bodies,  and  even  the  universe  itself,  which 
is  but  the  manifested  soul  of  God.  And  thus,  at  the  realistic 
extreme,  our  knowledge  would  claim  to  include  nothing  less 
than  the  very  essence  of  things. 

It  should  be  observed,  however,  in  passing,  that  absurd  and 
irreconcilable  as  these  two  extremes  may  appear,  they  never- 
theless contain  valuable  truths,  susceptible  of  being  elimi- 
nated and  combined,  as  indeed  has  been  already  attempted,  in 
the  realistic  idealism  of  Zeller,  Ulrici  and  Trendelenberg. 

As  to  the  second  problem  of  philosophy,  the  method  or 
process  of  knowledge,  there  arose  also  two  rival  schools,  the 
transcendentalists  and  the  empiricists.  According  to  the 
former,  all  science  proceeds  deductively,  from  principles  to 
facts,  from  reason  to  experience.  And  the  tendency  was  of 
ancient  and  extensive  growth.  The  whole  Eastern  mind,  for 
ages,  had  been  intensely  transcendental.  The  Hindoo  had 
plunged  into  the  Ganges  and  under  the  car  of  Juggernaut,  in 
search  of  that  nirwana,  or  original  abstract  being,  out  of  which 
all  finite  existence  had  at  first  merged  only  as  a  guilty  abor- 
tion. The  Greek,  as  he  wandered  amid  his  faultless  temples, 
had  mused  upon  those  more  divine  archetypes,  which  were  so 
imperfectly  copied  in  things.  The  fathers,  in  cloister  and 
council,  had  speculated  upon  the  transcendental  mysteries  of 
a  pre-existent  Logos  and  a  Trinity  before  the  world  was.  The 
schoolmen,  with  their  brilliant  logomachies,  had  fought,  like 


292  Tlic  Rupture  in  Philosophy.  [part  i. 

Milton's  embattled  angels,  over  ante-mundane  problems  and 
pre-existent  universals.  Even  the  reformers,  for  all  their 
experimental  religion,  had  ever  reverted  to  the  most  transcen- 
tal  predestinarianism  concerning  the  divine  decrees.  And 
with  the  rise  of  speculation  came  more  scientific  phases  of  the 
same  spirit. 

The  first  phase  of  transcendentalism  was  theological,  de- 
ducing everything  from  the  Divine  attributes.  Descartes,  rea- 
soning from  the  conception  to  the  existence  of  God  as  the 
most  perfect  being,  all-mighty,  all-wise  and  all-good,  and  as- 
suming an  original  plenum  of  vortices,  including  material  and 
spiritual  substances,  proceeded  from  these  premises  to  demon- 
strate how  the  existing  world  might  have  been  created.  Spi- 
noza, reasoning  from  the  Cartesian  definition  of  substance  as 
independent  existence  to  the  being  of  God,  as  the  one  only 
substance  with  the  two  attributes  of  thought  and  extension, 
mind  and  matter,  thence  proceeded  with  an  array  of  axioms 
and  propositions,  after  the  manner  of  Euclid,  to  demonstrate 
how  the  existing  world  must  have  been  created.  Leibnitz, 
converting  the  infinite  and  finite  substances  of  Spinoza  and 
Descartes  into  analogous  graduated  beings  or  monads,  con- 
scious and  unconscious,  material  and  spiritual,  and  assuming 
their  pre-established  harmony,  then  essayed,  with  his  axiom 
of  a  sufficient  reason  for  everything  good  or  evil,  to  demon- 
strate the  existing  world  as  the  very  best  that  could  have  been 
created.  And  by  similar  reasoning  a  succession  of  theodicies, 
or  divine  systems  of  the  universe,  were  unfolded  with  endless 
variations  from  the  days  of  Wolf  until  the  time  of  Kant. 

The  next  was  a  psychological  transcendentalism,  deducing 
everything  from  self-consciousness.  Kant,  as  we  have  seen, 
had  left  many  problems  in  his  transcendental  logic,  which  his 
successors  were  eager  to  solve.  Fichte  began  the  task  with 
his  subjective  egoism;  and,  assuming  both  the  content  and 
form  of  knowledge  to  be  produced  by  or  created  through  the 
mind  itself,  he  exhibited,  in  opposition  to  vulgar  impressions, 
the  whole  existing  world  as  a  mere  projection  of  the  ego  or 
reflection  of  the  philosophic  consciousness.  Schelling  soon 
followed  Fichte  with  his  objective  egoism;  and  postulating 
one    original  intelligence   as    objective    in   nature    and  sub- 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Knozulcdge.  293 

jective  in  man,  he  essayed  in  advance  of  inductive  research, 
according  to  the  laws  of  our  own  consciousness,  to  reconstruct 
the  whole  existing  world  as  a  product  of  the  infinite  conscious- 
ness. Hegel  then  advanced  between  Fichte  and  Schelling 
with  his  universal  dialectic;  and  maintaining  that  the  ab- 
solute mind  must  have  proceeded  rationally,  even  dialcctical- 
ly,  in  producing  all  things  out  of  nothing,  he  essayed  by  mere 
formal  logic,  according  to  the  laws  of  thought,  to  re-think  the 
whole  existing  world  as  a  process  of  pure  reason.  And  from 
each  of  these  schools  a  swarm  of  such  speculative  cosmogo- 
nies, or  logical  systems  of  the  universe,  has  been  issuing  until 
the  present  hour. 

But  the  latest  phase  of  transcendentalism  has  been  ontologi- 
cal,  deducing  everything  from  the  Absolute  itself  Fichte, 
Schelling  and  Hegel,  through  all  their  rigorous  logic,  retained 
an  unknown  quantity,  a  sort  of  potential  source  of  all  actual  be- 
ing, termed  by  the  first  the  absolute  self,  by  the  second  the  abso- 
lute mind,  and  by  the  third  the  absolute  idea  or  thought ;  and 
this  unknown  quantity  had  yet  to  be  eliminated  or  resolved. 
Hegel,  indeed,  of  the  three  had  assumed  the  least,  by  apparent- 
ly starting  from  the  notion  of  nothing,  excluding  the  personal 
element  from  the  absolute  reason,  at  least  in  its  objective  ex- 
pression, and  retaining  only  a  sort  of  unconscious  logic  or 
ceaseless  thinking  according  to  the  laws  of  thought.  Shop- 
enhauer,  then  seizing  the  problem  anew,  declared  the  will  to 
be  the  only  known  cause  and  support  of  that  phenomenal  ego, 
out  of  which  his  predecessors  had  evolved  all  knowledge,  and 
tracing  the  will  downward  through  nature  to  mere  original 
blind  force,  he  pronounced  the  whole  existing  intelligible 
world,  when  thus  unmasked,  to  be  a  sheer  illusion,  like  a 
dream  in  the  night.  Hartmann,  endeavoring  to  reconcile  the 
panlogism  of  Hegel  with  the  panthelematism  of  Shopenhauer, 
(or  so-called  doctrine  of  universal  will,)  has  postulated  thought 
with  will,  reason  with  force,  as  co-ordinate  factors  of  all  phe- 
nomena throughout  irrational  nature,  and  accordingly  pro- 
jected the  whole  existing  world,  in  its  present  historical  stage, 
as  but  a  transitional  fiction,  like  a  dream  before  the  dawn. 
Julius  Bahnsen,  however,  insisting  against  Hartmann  that  the 
systems  of  Hegel  and    Shopenhauer  together  form  a  sort  of 


294  ^^^^  Rupture  in  Philosophy.  [part  i. 

universal  paralogism,  has  recently  argued  in  his  "  Philosophy 
of  History"  that  nature  originated  in  contradictions,  and  pro- 
ceeds, through  logical  and  actual  conflicts,  into  sheer  aimless- 
ness ;  and  has  consistently  not  hesitated  to  proclaim  the  whole 
existing  world,  as  it  issues  in  consciousness,  one  abortive 
paradox  and  very  nightmare  of  reason.  And  thus,  at  the 
transcendental  extreme,  all  knowledge  would  seem  logically 
reduced  to  absurdity. 

According  to  the  empiricists,  however,  all  science  proceeds 
a  posteriori,  inductively,  from  facts  to  principles.  And  this 
tendency,  though  of  later  origin  than  the  other,  had  been  rap- 
idly increasing.  The  whole  Western  mind  had  been  becom- 
ing thoroughly  empirical.  The  Hebrew,  since  the  days  of 
Enoch,  had  turned  from  the  worship  of  idols  to  actual  con- 
verse with  Jehovah  through  all  His  works  and  word  and 
ways.  The  Roman,  yoking  philosophy  to  the  chariot  of  Cae- 
sar, had  celebrated  an  empire  of  facts  over  that  of  ideas.  The 
Latin  fathers,  led  by  Augustine,  had  exchanged  a  speculative, 
pre-mundane  theology  for  polemical  definitions  of  the  Church, 
of  inherited  sin  and  of  human  conduct.  Even  some  of  the 
schoolmen,  such  as  Albert,  Raymond  Lully  and  Roger  Bacon, 
had  digressed  from  speculative  divinity  into  the  natural  sci- 
ences and  striven  for  their  emancipation.  The  practical  re- 
formers of  philosophy,  such  as  Copernicus,  Galileo  and  Kep- 
ler, had  already  proceeded,  in  their  physical  investigations  and 
discoveries,  upon  empirical  methods  which  had  yet  to  be  de- 
fined. And  at  the  same  time,  with  advancing  science,  came 
the  more  philosophical  forms  of  the  tendency. 

The  first  was  phaenomenological,  referring  everything  to 
mere  phaenomena.  Leonardo,  Telesius  and  Campanella,  as 
pioneers  of  empiricism,  successively  announced,  that  theory  is 
the  General  and  experiments  are  the  soldiers;  that  the  con- 
struction of  the  world  is  not  to  be  investigated  by  reasoning, 
but  apprehended  by  the  senses  and  collected  from  things 
themselves;  and  that  the  accumulated  systems  of  philosophers 
must  now  be  compared  with  the  world  itself  as  mere  copies 
with  the  original  epistle  of  God.  Francis  Bacon,  the  greatest 
of  modern  empiricists,  deprecated,  at  the  outset  of  his  great 
Instauration,  that  we  should  ever  offer  the  dreams  of  fancy  for 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Know/edge.  2g$ 

a  model  of  the  world;  prescribed,  in  his  "New  Logic,"  the 
rules  for  observing,  arranging  and  generalizing  facts;  and  ever 
made  it  his  capital  precept,  that  the  mind  be  not  taken  off 
from  things,  but  limited  thereby,  lest  working  upon  itself,  like 
the  spider,  it  produce  mere  cobwebs  of  learning,  admirable  for 
their  fineness,  but  of  no  use  and  profit.  Gassendi,  in  a  Trea- 
tise on  Logic,  anticipated  the  French  reactionary  empiricism 
by  defending  Bacon  against  Descartes,  as  a  philosopher  who 
sought  aid  from  things  to  perfect  the  cogitation  of  the  intellect, 
instead  of  leaving  it  to  its  own  ideas  and  powers.  And 
through  such  methods,  more  or  less  consciously  pursued,  the 
physical  sciences  began  rapidly  to  be  unfolded  by  hosts  of  in- 
vestigators, from  Bacon  to  Newton, 

The  next  form  of  empiricism  was  aetiological,  referring 
everything  to  causes.  Bacon,  bequeathing  to  posterity  the 
magnificent  project  which  he  could  not  finish,  had  left  the 
efficient  causes  of  things  still  enwrapt  in  mediaeval  obscurity, 
and  relegated  their  final  causes  or  special  ends  to  natural 
theology  as  barren  of  scientific  results,  like  vestal  virgins 
consecrated  to  God.  Newton  was  the  first  to  distinguish 
clearly  the  causes  of  phenomena  from  their  forms  or  laws, 
and  in  his  "Principia,"  declared  it  to  be  the  business  of 
philosophy  to  deduce  causes  from  effects  till  we  come  to 
the  First  Cause,  which,  is  certainly  not  mechanical.  Robert 
Boyle,  as  an  antagonist  of  Descartes,  maintained,  in  his 
"  Inquiry  into  the  Final  Causes  of  Natural  Things,"  that  it 
is  not  presumptuous  or  idle  to  inquire  after  such  causes,  if  it 
be  done  cautiously  and  with  due  regard  to  their  efificients ;  that 
even  inanimate  bodies  may  act  for  ends  as  designed  by  the 
First  Cause;  and  that  ends  in  nature  may  be  studied  in  four 
classes;  the  universal,  or  such  as  display  the  power,  wisdom 
and  goodness  of  the  Creator;  the  cosmical,  or  such  as  maintain 
the  order  and  beauty  of  the  world;  the  animal,  or  such  as 
mould  and  preserve  the  body;  and  the  human,  or  such  as  con- 
sciously exist  in  man  alone.  Reimarus,  in  his  "Logic"  and 
"Instincts  of  Animals,"  defending  the  Leibnitzian  principle  of 
sufficient  reason  against  Maupertuis,  maintained  that  final 
causes  have  as  solid  a  foundation  in  nature  as  in  reason,  that 
they  conduct  to  important   discoveries  in  the  physical  sci- 


296  The  Rupture  in  Philosophy.  [part  i. 

ences,  and  that  philosophy  requires  them  in  order  to  construct 
the  scale  of  natural  history  upon  the  basis  of  natural  theology. 
Cuvier,  as  he  himself  declared,  by  the  principle  of  final  cause 
or  design,  was  enabled  to  enrich  natural  history  with  all -the 
splendid  results  which  have  made  him  so  illustrious,  not  only 
erecting  the  whole  living  world  in  teleological  series,  each  in- 
dividual, species  and  class  with  its  own  end  and  relation,  but 
even  recalling  the  extinct  creations  of  former  ages  in  one  vast 
plan  of  nature.  Whewell,  in  his  "  Philosophy  of  the  Induc- 
tive Sciences,"  vindicated  the  proper  place  of  causes  in  physi- 
cal researches,  distinguished  laws  as  but  the  means  between 
efficient  and  final  causes,  defined  the  mechanical,  chemical 
and  vital  causes  of  corresponding  phenomena,  and  sketched 
the  palaetiological  sciences,  as  he  termed  them,  which  connect 
a  great  First  or  Final  Cause  with  the  origin  and  development 
of  the  whole  existing  world,  of  the  heavens,  of  the  earth,  and 
of  man,  with  all  his  peculiar  interests.  And  by  such  pro- 
cesses, though  seldom  admitted  and  sometimes  disavowed, 
immense  cosmologies,  geologies  and  systems  of  natural  his- 
tory have  been  succeeding  one  another  until  the  present  mo- 
ment. 

But  the  final  form  of  empiricism  has  been  nomologi- 
cal,  referring  eveiything  to  mere  laws.  Newton,  Cuvier  and 
Whewell,  through  all  their  experimental  researches,  ever  re- 
tained certain  transcendental  elements,  the  axioms  or  intui- 
tions of  power,  cause  and  purpose,  which  other  physicists 
were  anxious  to  extirpate  from  the  body  of  knowledge.  Mau- 
pertuis  had  already,  in  his  "Essay  on  Cosmology,"  banished 
final  causes  from  the  moral  and  speculative  sciences  as  mere 
mental  entities  and  bagatelles,  presumptuously  attributing  to 
God  our  frivolous  human  intentions.  D'Alembert  had  se- 
cluded them  from  the  mathematical  and  physical  sciences, 
with  the  ingenious  metaphor  of  Bacon,  as  the  vestals  in  the 
temple  of  knowledge.  Bufifon,  though  he  plainly  employed 
them  in  his  Natural  History,  had  discarded  them  as  useless 
and  even  noxious  fictions  in  scientific  researches.  Geoffrey 
St.  Hilaire,  in  opposition  to  Cuvier,  had  declared  that  he  knew 
nothing  of  animals  which  play  a  part  in  nature.  Auguste 
Comte,  as  if  to  formulate  these  views,  in  his  Positive  Philoso- 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Knowledge.  297 

phy  restricted  exact  knowledge  to  the  laws  of  phenomena, 
and  stigmatized  all  causes,  the  first,  the  efficient  and  the  final, 
as  mere  theology  and  metaphysics,  the  rude  guesses  of  an  in- 
fantile curiosity,  which  science,  by  the  very  law  of  its  growth, 
is  leaving  behind  it  among  ancient  myths  and  mediaeval  no- 
tions. John  Stuart  Mill,  in  his  "  System  of  Logic,"  not  only 
adopted  the  positive  principle  of  Comte,  but  completed  the 
empiricism  of  Hume,  Stewart  and  Brown,  by  resolving  all 
efficient  causation  into  mere  experienced  sequence,  and  even 
maintained,  in  opposition  to  Whewell,  that  axioms  themselves 
are  but  generalized  experiences,  so  that  two  and  two  may  not 
be  found  equal  to  four  among  the  inhabitants  of  the  dog-star. 
Herbert  Spencer,  apparently  determined  to  root  out  the  last 
shred  of  transcendentalism  from  his  "  First  Principles  of 
Philosophy,"  after  undermining  and  exploding,  by  the  Hamil- 
tonian  logic,  the  very  conception  of  an  absolute  First  Cause  of 
the  existing  universe,  has  left  the  superstructure  reposing  upon 
an  ultimate  truth  or  final  generalization,  which  he  terms  the 
persistence  of  force  rather  than  the  conservation  of  force,  be- 
cause the  latter  phrase  would  imply  a  Conserver  and  an  act  of 
conserving ;  in  other  words,  has  made  it  the  grand  funda- 
mental axiom,  that  the  world  continues  because  it  continues. 
And  thus,  at  the  empirical  extreme,  our  most  certain  know- 
ledge would  seem  resolved  to  sheer  uncertainty. 

These  wild  extremes,  however,  may  yet  appear  but  disparted 
truths,  which  might  lose  their  respective  error  if  logically  re- 
combined,  as  indeed  has  already  been  foreshadowed  in  the 
transcendental  empiricism  of  Whewell,  Ueberweg  and  Stan- 
ley Jevons. 

As  to  the  third  remaining  problem  of  philosophy,  the  des- 
tiny or  goal  of  knowledge,  there  have  arisen  the  two  rival 
schools  of  absolutists  and  positivists.  According  to  the 
former,  science  ever  tends  to  absolute  knowledge.  And  it  is 
a  yearning  which,  in  different  forms,  with  more  or  less  dis- 
tinctness, has  been  gathering  strength  for  ages.  The  entire 
philosophy  of  the  Orient  claimed  a  sort  of  universal  intuition. 
The  Brahmin,  in  his  pride  of  caste,  believed  himself  on  the 
verge  of  nirwana,  about  to  fathom  the  secret  of  the  world. 
The  Eleatics,  Xenophanes,  Parmenides  and  Zeno,  at  the  dawn 

2N 


298  TJic  Ritptiirc  in  Pliilosopliy.  [part  i. 

of  Greek  thought,  seized  that  one  only  being  out  of  which 
successive  schools  unfolded  the  endless  multiplicity  of  phe- 
nomena, until  the  sophists  swarmed  forth  with  a  pretended 
universal  knowledge.  The  Gnostics  of  the  early  Church  and 
the  Alexandrian  fathers,  behind  the  popular  faith,  wove  to- 
gether all  human  and  divine  wisdom  as,  together,  affording 
nothing  less  than  a  consummate  philosophy.  The  dogmatists 
of  the  middle  ages,  within  the  pale  of  an  infallible  Church, 
proudly  walked  the  closed  circle  of  the  sciences  and  claimed 
their  "sum  of  theology"  as  the  sum  of  knowledge.  The  mys- 
tics of  a  later  day,  Eckhart,  Tauler  and  Rusbroek,  dreamed  of 
a  profound  absorption  in  the  absolute  godhead,  by  which  they 
became  conscious  of  all  things.  The  theosophists  of  the  re- 
formation, Paracelsus,  Helmont  and  Boehme,  claimed  to  have 
read  all  the  secrets  of  nature  and  Scripture  under  an  immedi- 
ate illumination.  The  reforming  philosophers  of  the  next 
period,  Descartes,  Spinoza  and  Leibnitz,  who  began  by  doubt- 
ing, ended  by  explaining  everything  with  geometrical  logic, 
from  the  interior  essence  of  God  to  the  problem  of  creation, 
including  the  development  of  the  actual,  necessary  and  perfect 
world  from  among  all  possible  worlds,  and  thus  bequeathed 
to  Wolf  the  materials  which  he  wrought  into  a  universal  sys- 
tem, both  rational  and  empirical.  And  in  our  own  times  have 
followed  still  more  philosophical  claims  to  such  absolute  sci- 
ence. 

The  first  claim  has  been,  that  the  absolute  or  infinite  is  at 
least  conceivable.  Kant,  the  unwitting  father  of  modern  ab- 
solutism, and  the  first  to  define  it  since  the  days  of  Parmen- 
ides,  though  .he  struck  the  whole  Wolfian  metaphysic  from 
the  list  of  sciences,  still  retained  its  germinal  principle,  the 
notion  of  the  absolute  or  infinite,  as  an  idea  of  the  pure  rea- 
son, generalized  from  the  finite  and  contingent.  Professor 
Calderwood,  defending  this  notion  of  Kant  from  the  attacks  of 
Hamilton,  has  ably  maintained,  in  his  "Philosophy  of  the  In- 
finite," that  the  infinite  may  exist  in  relation  to  the  finite,  and 
still  be  absolute  or  independent;  that  man  does  realize  a  con- 
ception of  the  infinite  Being,  positive  in  its  content,  though 
partial,  indefinite  and  insusceptible  of  completion;  and  that 
this  conception  is  an  ultimate  fact  of  consciousness,  and  not 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Knoivlcdge.  299 

the  result  of  any  logical  demonstration.  Professor  Ferrier, 
advancing  beyond  Kant  and  Calderwood,  has  argued  with 
wonderful  subtlety  and  clearness,  in  his  "  Institutes  of  Meta- 
physics," that  there  can  be  no  being  without  knowing,  no  ob- 
ject without  a  subject,  no  existence  out  of  relation  to  intelli- 
gence ;  that  although,  strictly  speaking,  we  are  ignorant  of 
other  absolute  existences  than  ourselves,  yet  they  are  at  least 
conceivable,  as  analogous  beings  or  minds  in  synthesis  with 
things  ;  that  the  only  necessary  absolute  existence,  called  God, 
is  conceivable  as  an  infinite  mind  in  synthesis  with  the  uni- 
verse, and  that  this  conception  not  only  may,  but  mu.st  be 
formed  by  every  thinking  mind,  a  world  without  a  God  being 
a  clear  absurdity.  And  it  will  be  admitted  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  that  since  the  time  of  Kant  the  conception  itself,  whether 
negative  or  positive,  partial  or  perfect,  absurd  or  logical,  has 
been  almost  unquestionably  accepted  by  hosts  of  profound 
philosophers  as  the  germ  of  numerous  systems  of  absolute 
knowledge. 

The  next  claim  advanced,  therefore,  has  been  that  the  ab- 
solute or  infinite  is  cognizable  as  well  as  conceivable.  Fichte, 
having  been  charged  with  atheism  for  his  view  of  God  as  a 
mere  regulative  idea  of  the  mind,  wrote  a  "  New  Exposition 
of  the  Science  of  Knowledge,"  in  which  he  conceived  the  ab- 
solute as  the  infinite  Ego,  embracing  all  finite  egos,  yet  ex- 
pressed in  them,  and,  therefore,  knowable  by  the  analogy  be- 
tween the  human  and  divine  consciousness.  Schelling,  how- 
ever, having  conceived  the  absolute  as  a  transcendental  ego 
'beyond  our  consciousness,  beyond  both  man  and  nature,  the 
one  original  soul  of  the  world,  could  only  cognize  it  by  be- 
coming one  with  it,  by  lapsing  from  consciousness  into  it,  by 
losing  and  finding  himself  in  it,  through  a  mystical  act,  which 
he  termed  intellectual  intuition,  and  claimed  as  the  sole  prero- 
gative of  philosophic  genius.  Krause,  a  pupil  of  Schelling, 
who  endeavored  to  convert  his  pantheism  into  panentheism, 
or  the  doctrine  of  the  immanence  of  the  world  in  God,  held 
still  more  emphatically  that  the  intuitive  cognition  of  the  infi- 
nite, or,  as  he  termed  it,  the  vision  of  the  one  all-inclusive 
primal  being,  must  be  made  the  beginning  and  end  of  philoso- 
phy, as  the  science  of  the  absolute.     And  whatever  may  be 


30O  TJie  Rupture  in  Philosophy.  [part  i. 

thought  of  such  pecuHar  cognition,  whether  it  be  fictitious  or 
genuine,  obscure  or  clear,  it  has  certainly  been  assumed  as  the 
basis  of  the  most  stupendous  speculations  of  modern  times. 
For  the  final  claim  has  been  that  the  absolute  or  the  intel- 
gible  universe  is  comprehensible  as  well  as  conceivable  and 
cognizable.  Hegel,  having  defined  the  absolute  as  pure  rea- 
son or  essential  thought,  maintained  against  Schelling  that  it 
is  not  to  be  reached  by  one  swift  intuition,  as  if  shot  out  of  a 
pistol,  but  discursively,  through  the  dialectical  process  ;  and 
accordingly,  by  sheer  logic,  by  unfolding  one  notion  out  of 
another,  from  the  poorest  up  to  the  richest,  he  boldly  claimed 
to  reconstruct  all  things  from  nothing,  to  re-think  the  whole 
thought  of  the  Creator,  to  comprehend  the  beginning,  cause 
and  end  of  creation  ;  in  a  word,  to  logically  solve  the  problem 
of  the  universe.  Cousin,  the  enthusiastic  interpreter  of  He- 
gel, in  his  "  History  of  Philosophy,"  still  more  distinctly  pro- 
nounced this  creative  logic,  this  development  of  the  universe 
according  to  the  laws  of  thought,  this  reasoning  out  the  world 
problem  by  the  world-mind,  to  be  necessary  rather  than  vol- 
untary in  the  Creator,  and  therefore,  when  reflected  in  human 
consciousness,  as  intelligible  and  comprehensible  as  any  other 
logical  process.  Shopenhauer,  however,  insisting  against  He- 
gel what  Cousin  admitted,  that  such  panlogism  involves  the- 
ism, declared  that  he  alone,  of  all  philosophers,  had  eliminated 
the  remaining  unknown  element  and  rendered  the  universe 
perfectly  comprehensible,  as  a  macanthropos-  or  phenomenal 
manifestation  of  human  will  and  thought.  Hartmann,  more 
recently,  as  the  conciliator  of  Hegel  and  Shopenhauer,  has 
argued  that  the  triumph  of  thought  over  force,  reason  over 
will,  in  the  development  of  the  world  or  the  full  comprehen- 
sion of  the  absolute,  must  be  gradual  rather  than  immediate, 
and  is  not  to  be  attained,  logically,  in  the  individual,  but  his- 
torically, in  the  race,  through  the  empirical  progress  of  know- 
ledge. And  thus,  according  to  the  extreme  absolutist,  our 
science  must,  sooner  or  later,  end  in  omniscience. 

According  to  the  positivists,  however,  all  science  still  tends 
to  mere  positive  or  finite  knowledge.  And  this  apprehension, 
in  certain  classes  of  minds,  has  been  gaining  ground  for  cen- 
turies.    The  peculiar  philosophy  of  the  West  has  ever  con- 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Knozvlcdgc.  30 1 

fessed  a  sort  of  conscious  ignorance.  The  Hebrew,  in  the 
time  of  Job,  quailed  before  the  same  enigmas  which  the 
Egyptian,  in  despairing  agony,  had  expressed  in  the  sphynx, 
the  obehsk  and  the  tomb.  The  Greek  had  his  temple  of  Isis, 
inscribed  to  that  absolute  Being  whose  veil  has  never  been 
withdrawn  by  mortals ;  and  recoiling  at  length  with  Socrates, 
from  the  shallow  pretence  of  the  sophists,  despaired  of  all 
knowledge  as  but  the  learning  of  our  own  ignorance,  and  of 
religion  itself  as  a  mere  altar  to  the  Unknown  God.  The  Ro- 
man, amid  these  decaying  philosophies,  with  their  still  un- 
solved riddles,  when  confronted  with  Truth  itself,  could  only 
sneer.  What  is  truth  ?  The  Latin  fathers,  Tertullian,  Lactan- 
tius,  Augustine,  claimed  it  to  be  a  function  of  revelation  to 
expose  all  heathen  philosophy  as  false  science,  and  substitute 
a  divine  wisdom,  adapted  to  our  limited  faculties  and  interests. 
The  more  sober  schoolmen,  Anselm,  Albert,  Aquinas,  amid 
all  their  daring  speculations  upon  abstract  godhead,  had 
glimpses  of  its  essential  incomprehensibility  and  of  the  nar- 
row scope  of  their  dogmatic  knowledge.  The  critical  school- 
men, Duns  Scotus,  Occam  and  Raimond,  by  analyzing  all  and 
discarding  some  of  the  traditional  demonstrations  of  the  Di- 
vine Being,  anticipated  Kant  in  shaking  the  very  foundations 
of  every  metaphysical  theory  of  the  universe.  The  religious 
reformers,  Luther,  Melancthon,  Calvin,  against  the  claims  of  an 
infallible  Church,  urged  a  definite  revelation  of  secret  things 
which  belong  unto  God,  as  unrevealed  and  unrevealable  mys- 
teries. The  philosophical  sceptics,  Montaigne,  Charron  and 
La  Motte,  despaired  of  any  complete  knowledge,  either 
from  reason  or  revelation.  And  in  later  times  came  still  more 
philosophical  admissions  of  a  mere  finite  science. 

It  was  first  granted,  that  the  infinite  is  incomprehensible. 
Bacon,  in  his  "Advancement  of  Learning,"  erected  physics 
and  metaphysics  as  ascending  stages  of  a  pyramid,  whose  vor- 
tex is  lost  in  divinity,  beyond  the  reach  of  those  daring  spirits 
who  would  build  the  sciences,  as  the  giants  piled  Pelion  upon 
Ossa,  with  the  vain  hope  of  invading  heaven.  Hobbes  ex- 
cluded from  his  "  Elements  of  Philosophy  "  the  whole  region 
of  theology  as  incomprehensible,  together  with  all  knowledge 
derived  from  revelation,  and  limited  science  to  mere  bodies. 


302  The  Riipturc  in  Philosophy.  [part  i. 

physical  and  political.  Locke,  with  still  more  emphasis,  dis- 
claimed any  affectation  of  universal  knowledge,  and  at  the 
very  outset  of  his  Essay  turned  away  from  that  vast  ocean  of 
being  which,  had  been  so  idly  claimed  as  the  natural  and' un- 
bounded possession  of  our  understanding,  wherein  was  nothing 
exempt  from  its  decisions  or  that  escaped  its  comprehension. 
And  this  restriction  of  science  to  the  finite,  whether  uninten- 
tional or  avowed,  theistic  or  atheistic,  became  practically  the 
principle  upon  which  the  great  body  of  English  philosophers 
proceeded. 

The  next  similar  admission,  however,  was  that  the  infi- 
nite is  not  merely  incomprehensible  but  incognizable.  Even 
Descartes,  Malebranche  and  Maupertuis,  though  devout  the- 
ists,  by  pronouncing  the  search  for  final  causes  misleading, 
idle  and  presumptuous,  simply  secluded  their  theology  as  a 
recondite  province  of  revelation,  wholly  unknown  to  science, 
or  retained  it  in  the  form  of  metaphysics.  D'Alembert,  Rob- 
inet  and  D'Holbach,  however,  by  ignoring  or  rejecting  that 
First  Cause,  of  which  all  final  causes  are  but  expressions,  by 
referring  the  universe  to  an  unknown  God  or  incognizable 
principle,  at  length  excluded  both  metaphysics  and  theology 
from  the  physical  sciences  as  wholly  useless  and  superstitious, 
and  consistently  constructed  their  famous  Encyclopaedia  upon 
a  finite  basis  as  a  mere  system  of  Nature.  Auguste  Comte, 
the  latest  reformer  of  the  same  school,  merely  enunciated  its 
chief  doctrine,  in  the  form  of  an  historic  law  or  generalization, 
by  maintaining  that  as  the  sciences  successively  become  perfect, 
they  outgrow  all  theology  and  metaphysics  as  mere  infantile 
conjecture  and  exploded  hypothesis.  George  H.  Lewes,  the 
chief  English  interpreter  of  Comte,  in  his  "  History  of  Philos- 
ophy," has  but  attempted  to  trace,  through  ancient  and  modern 
times,  the  supposed  emancipation  of  science  from  theology 
and  metaphysics,  and  its  gradual  transformation  into  a  posi- 
tive philosophy,  which  shall  forever  ignore  the  absolute  as 
unknowable.  And  this  contraction  of  science  within  the 
finite,  whether  desired  or  deprecated,  from  the  most  opposite 
motives,  has  at  length  been  accepted  as  a  logical  as  well  as 
historical  principle  of  scientific  development. 

As  if  to  bring  the  positivist  tendency  to  a  climax,  the  final 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Knowledge.  303 

admission  has  been,  that  the  infinite  is  not  only  incognizable 
but  utterly  inconceivable.  Hamilton,  in  his  "  Philosophy  of 
the  Conditioned,"  defining  the  infinite  as  the  unfinished  and 
the  absolute  as  the  finished,  and  claiming  both  as  phases  of 
the  unconditioned,  has  then  labored  to  prove  that  our  con- 
ception of  them  is  a  mere  bundle  of  negations  and  contradic- 
tions ;  that  consequently  a  science  of  the  conditioned  alone  is 
possible;  and  that  the  German  philosophies  of  the  absolute, 
since  the  time  of  Kant,  have  been  a  series  of  mere  impotent 
speculations.  Mansel,  in  his  "  Limits  of  Religious  Thought," 
as  a  disciple  of  Hamilton,  has  argued  that  we  are  constitu- 
tionally compelled  to  believe  in  an  absolute  Being,  whom  we 
can  neither  know  nor  conceive;  that  the  revelation  of  such  a 
Being  can  only  be  an  accommodation  of  infinite  truth  to  our 
finite  faculties,  and  that  all  rational  theology,  proceeding  upon 
the  conception  of  an  absolute  First  Cause,  must  ever  destroy 
itself  with  endless  self-contradictions.  Herbert  Spencer,  in 
his  "  First  Principles  of  Philosophy,"  has  at  length  turned  the 
destructive  criticism  of  Hamilton  and  Mansel  against  both 
metaphysics  and  theology,  declaring  it  to  be  at  once  the  height 
of  impiety  and  absurdity  to  represent  the  absolute  reality  mani- 
fested in  the  universe,  the  great  First  Cause,  as  other  than  es- 
sentially unknowable  and  even  utterly  inconceivable.  And 
thus,  according  to  the  extreme  positivist,  our  science  at  last 
must  end  in  sheer  nescience. 

It  remains  to  be  seen  whether,  between  the  extremes  of  ab- 
solutism and  positivism,  may  not  be  found  an  ultimate  or  final 
philosophy,  in  which  reason  shall  progressively  concur  with 
revelation,  and  science  ever  expand  toward  Omniscience. 

The  third  and  final  stage  of  departure,  which  certain  think- 
ers have  reached  in  our  day,  is  that  of  repudiating  both  the 
idea  and  the  fact  of  a  revelation  as  no  longer  of  any  philo- 
sophical value.  It  was  not  strange  that  the  earlier  philoso- 
phers at  the  reformation  should  have  carefully  distinguished 
the  provinces  of  reason  and  revelation  as  at  least  theoretically 
separate ;  that  Bacon  should  have  insisted  upon  giving  to  faith 
the  things  that  are  faith's,  or  that  Descartes  should  have  de- 
ferred to  revealed  verities  as  a  distinct  order  of  truths.  Nor 
has   it  been  strange  that  some  later  philosophers,  from  mo- 


304  The  Rupture  in  Philosophy.  [part  i. 

tives  of  convenience  and  reverence,  should  exclude  the  sa- 
cred phrases  of  religion  from  the  jargon  of  science ;  that  Cu- 
vier,  as  he  scaled  the  summits  of  natural  history,  should  have 
ascribed  to  a  personification,  styled  Nature,  those  sublime  in- 
tentions which  he  adored  in  the  all-wise  Creator ;  or  that  He- 
gel, as  he  sounded  the  depths  of  metaphysics,  should  have  at- 
tributed to  an  abstraction,  termed  the  Absolute,  those  rational 
perfections  which  he  worshipped  in  the  self-existent  Jehovah. 
But  it  has  been  reserved  for  another  and  very  different  race  of 
philosophers,  in  our  time,  to  put  such  mere  personifications 
and  abstractions  in  place  of  the  revealed  realities,  to  claim  the 
problems  of  revelation  as  soluble  by  reason,  and  to  supersede 
the  infinite  knowledge  of  God  with  the  finite  knowledge  of 
man.  And  they  may  be  found  in  all  schools,  among  all  par- 
ties. Some  of  the  German  absolutists  have  virtually  usurped 
the  function  of  a  revelation  by  including  in  their  systems  the 
unrevealed,  if  not  unrevealable  mysteries  of  essential,  pre- 
mundane  theology,  as  well  as  the  whole  superstructure  of  the 
physical  and  psychical  sciences.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
French  and  English  positivists,  such  as  Comte  and  Spencer, 
by  ignoring  all  revelation,  have  excluded  from  their  systems 
the  whole  revealed  theology  together  with  the  metaphysical 
and  some  of  the  psychical  sciences.  And  the  same  unphilo- 
sophical  spirit  has  appeared  practically  in  certain  speculative 
scientists  who  have  endeavored  to  define  the  nature  and  lim- 
its of  empirical  research.  Mr.  Parke  Godwin,  in  an  eloquent 
addresss  on  True  and  False  Science,  has  exposed  their  irra- 
tional and  irreligious  attempts  by  mere  induction  to  settle 
problems  which  can  only  be  solved  by  revelation,  such  as  the 
origin  and  end  of  the  world,  and  the  whole  course  of  the  uni- 
verse. Professor  Youmans  has  replied  to  these  strictures, 
that  science  by  its  own  expansion,  is  bringing  such  problems 
within  its  scope;  that  it  can  know  no  limits  but  those  which 
nature  itself  imposes;  and  that  it  must  pursue  its  course  in- 
dependently of  any  religious  considerations.  Professors  Hux- 
ley and  Tyndall  arc  solicitous  that  metaphysicians  and  the- 
ologians should  let  physical  science  alone,  while  they  are 
themselves  invading  the  whole  region  of  natural  theology  and 
metaphysics  with  the  freest  speculations  upon  force,  mind, 
causality  and  design.     Haeckel  dismisses  all   religious  faith 


CHAP.  III.]  Scientific  Knowledge.  305 

from  the  same  region  as  mere  superstition.  And  the  great 
German  physicist  Rudolf  Virchow  renounces  the  attempt  to 
supplement  exact  science  with  revelation  as  a  mere  supersen- 
suous  transcendentalism  or  aberration  of  mind. 

On  the  revealed  side  of  philosophy,  however,  may  be  traced 
a  like  gradual  severance  of  revelation  from  reason,  as  the  source 
of  human  knowledge.  In  the  first  stage  came  the  healthy  re- 
action against  a  false  Protestantism,  the  rationalism  which  was 
turning  free  thought  into  license.  It  was  the  time  when  the 
champions  of  Christian  Evidence  were  entering  the  lists  of 
philosophy  to  meet  their  opponents  on  the  open  field  of  right 
reason  and  free  discussion.  Cudworth,  Bentley  and  Warbur- 
ton  had  opened  the  warfare  as  in  the  cumbrous  mail  of  an  old 
tournament,  with  their  rash  feats  of  logic  and  learning,  against 
the  scepticism  of  Hobbes,  the  free-thinking  of  Collins,  and 
the  paganism  of  Morgan,  Bishop  Berkeley,  the  prince  of 
Christian  idealists,  returning  from  a  rocky  alcove  of  Rhode 
Island,  where  he  had  composed  those  elegant  dialogues  in  his 
"Alciphron  or  Minute  Philosopher,"  with  which  to  confound 
the  small  wits  of  his  time,  proceeded  to  lay  a  foundation  for 
the  metaphysical  evidences  of  revelation  in  the  very  principles 
of  human  knowledge.  Bishop  Butler,  the  greatest  of  Christian 
realists,  whose  architectonic  genius  wrought  into  one  high 
argument  the  closely-packed  results  of  twenty  years'  hard 
thinking  upon  the  religious  problems  of  his  age,  now  pro- 
jected the  superstructure  of  the  scientific  evidences  through 
the  whole  analogy  of  religion  and  nature.  Dr.  Nathaniel 
Lardner,  the  chief  of  Christian  antiquarians,  pressing  the  foe 
beyond  Butler  and  Berkeley  from  the  citadel  to  the  outworks, 
then  built,  with  life-long  toil,  patience  and  judgment,  those 
impregnable  bulwarks  of  the  historical  evidences,  his  "  Credi- 
bility of  the  Gospel  History"  and  his  "Ancient  Jewish  and 
Heathen  Testimonies."  And  from  that  time,  by  the  efforts  of 
great  apologists,  such  as  Neander,  Ebrard,  Ullmann  and  Lut- 
hardt,  Norton,  Greenleaf,  Rawlinson,  Alexander  and  Mcll- 
vaine,  and  not  without  help  from  the  Roman  Catholic  Demon- 
strations and  the  rationalistic  exegetes,  have  been  formed  evi- 
dential schools  for  definitely  settling  the  whole  doctrine  of 
divine  wisdom,  as  revealed  by  the  Holy  Spirit. 


3o6  TJic  Rupture  in  Philosophy.  [part  i. 

But  meanwhile,  in  the  next  stage  of  indifference,  and  seem- 
ingly unaffected  as  yet  by  the  modern  speculations  concerning 
the  origin,  development  and  destiny  of  human  knowledge, 
have  remained  the  traditional  dogmas  as  to  the  inspiration, 
the  canon  and  the  fulfillment  of  the  Scripture.  As  to  the  in- 
spiration of  the  Scriptures,  Catholics  and  Protestants  have 
been  agreed  in  maintaining  the  possibility,  necessity  and  fact 
of  a  revelation,  and  in  defining  it  as  a  supernatural  communi- 
cation of  knowledge  from  God  to  man,  through  the  prophets 
and  apostles,  by  the  aid  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  The  Jansenists, 
more  strictly  than  the  Jesuits,  have  claimed  a  verbal  as  well 
as  ideal  inspiration,  while  the  later  Protestant  divines,  through 
their  conflicts  with  rationalism,  have  matured  the  tenet  of 
plenary  inspiration,  embracing  both  the  words  and  the  ideas 
of  the  sacred  writers.  Moreover,  the  most  varied  opinions 
prevail  within  the  limits  of  orthodoxy,  as  to  the  normal  rela- 
tions of  reason  and  revelation,  and  the  degree  to  which  they 
may  coincide  and  co-operate  in  different  fields  of  inquiry. 

As  to  the  canon  of  Scripture  a  more  serious  disagree- 
ment began  at  the  Reformation.  The  Roman  Catholic  Churcli, 
by  the  Council  of  Trent,  declared  the  only  source  of  divine 
knowledge  to  be  contained  in  the  Latin  Vulgate  version  of 
the  Scriptures,  the  Apocrypha  and  the  unwritten  traditions  of 
Christ  and  the  Apostles,  as  interpreted  by  Holy  Mother 
Church  alone,  through  the  infallible  decrees  of  her  councils 
and  pontiffs.  The  Protestant  or  Lutheran  Church,  in  her 
Book  of  Concord,  repudiated  the  traditions,  ignored  the  Apoc- 
rypha, declared  the  writings  of  the  fathers  not  of  equal  au- 
thority with  the  Scriptures,  and  appealed  to  the  Word  of  God, 
freely  interpreted,  without  the  councils,  by  both  clergy  and 
laity,  as  the  only  rule  according  to  which  all  dogmas  and  doc- 
tors ought  to  be  estimated  and  judged.  The  Church  of  Eng- 
land, in  her  Articles,  depreciated  the  traditions,  the  Apocry- 
pha and  the  decrees  of  Councils,  and  maintained  her  own 
authority  in  prescribing  such  rites  and  ceremonies  as  are  not 
contrary  to  the  word  of  God,  while  otherwise  allowing  the 
right  of  private  interpretation.  And  the  different  Reformed 
Churches,  in  both  the  old  world  and  the  new,  besides  main- 
taining that  the  Holy  Scriptures  contain  the  only  rule  of  faith 


CHAP.  III.]  Biblical  Knoivlcdge.  307 

and  practice,  have  clearly  distinguished  between  the  scientific 
or  systematic  exposition  of  the  contents  of  the  original  He- 
brew and  Greek,  and  that  saving  knowledge  to  be  derived 
even  from  the  common  version,  as  read  by  the  aid  of  the  Holy 
Spirit. 

As  to  the  fulfillment  of  the  Scripture,  while  all  Christians 
are  agreed  that  the  canon  is  complete,  yet  the  Catholics,  by 
their  doctrine  that  the  Church  is  an  infallible  teacher,  provide 
for  continuous  accretions  of  religious  knowledge,  and  Pro- 
testants, with  their  claim  to  divine  illumination,  admit  that 
large  portions  of  Scripture,  especially  the  prophetical  books, 
remain  to  be  fully  comprehended,  and  that  their  full  compre- 
hension is  to  be  attained  in  the  progress  of  sacred  learning, 
or,  as  the  Millennarians  hold,  by  new  dispensations  and  revela- 
tions, bringing  miraculous  accessions  of  truth  and  wisdom. 

In  the  final  stage  of  perfect  indifference,  we  may  now  behold 
the  whole  philosophical  region,  all  scientific  knowledge,  openly 
repudiated  as  of  no  religious  value,  and  without  significance 
either  for  the  defence  and  explication  of  the  Scriptures,  or  for 
the  completion  of  biblical  knowledge.  Some  profound  and  in- 
telligent divines  there  may  be,  who  have  begun  to  discern  the 
essential  relations  of  reason  and  revelation  and  aspire  to  ad- 
just them ;  but  the  ideal  of  a  true  Christian  Philosophy,  har- 
monizing and  organizing  all  knowledge,  divine  and  human,  if 
clearly  grasped,  is  but  treated  as  a  vain  fancy  of  the  fathers  or 
an  exploded  dream  of  the  schoolmen.  Not  only  do  the  more 
obscure  and  illiterate  sects  simply  denounce  all  philosophy  as 
false  and  worthless,  but  even  the  great  enlightened  Churches, 
though  living  in  an  age  distinguished  for  the  intellectual  gran- 
deur of  its  speculations,  though  surrounded  by  formidable 
systems  which  are  wielded  both  for  and  against  the  Christian 
revelation,  and  though  themselves  maintaining  creeds  which 
traditionally  involve  elements  of  the  Greek,  Roman,  and  even 
Arabian  philosophies,  seem  neither  to  desire  nor  to.  expect 
anything  more  perfect  than  their  own  little  systems  of  know- 
ledge, which  neither  exhaust  the  whole  of  divine  revelation 
nor  include  any  part  of  human  science. 

And  thus  philosophy,  the  very  guide  of  the  sciences,  instead 
of  mounting  towards  the  fullness  of  divine  knowledge,  is  but 


3o8  TJic  Breach  in  Civilization.  [part  i. 

left  by  the  indifferent  spirit  on  the  one  side  to  wander  in  the 
bhndness  of  uninspired  reason,  or  on  the  other  to  crouch  in 
abject  pupilage  at  the  feet  of  mere  human  authority. 

The  General  Rupture  in  Civilization. 

Returning  at  length  from  these  heights  of  philosophy  and 
science  to  the  busy  world  below,  in  search  of  the  practical 
issues  of  the  great  schism,  we  shall  find  ourselves  passing  be- 
tween divided  interests  and  forces,  the  one  worldly  and  the 
other  sacred,  held  apart  with  reserved  antagonism,  like  brist- 
ling armaments  in  a  time  of  siege. 

On  the  worldly  side  of  life  we  behold  a  civilization  which, 
for  three  centuries,  has  been  steadily  departing  from  Christi- 
anity. Released  at  the  Reformation  from  the  false  Christian 
culture  of  the  middle  ages,  it  has  advanced  with  growing 
worldliness  through  every  sphere  of  human  activity.  The 
first  diverging  step  was  the  secularization  of  literature.  Fici- 
nus,  the  two  Picos,  the  Medici,  as  we  have  seen,  toward  the 
close  of  the  fifteenth  century,  had  brought  Grecian  letters  into 
Italy,  face  to  face  with  the  barbarous  Latinity  of  the  school- 
men. Reuchlin,  Erasmus  and  Agrippa,  in  the  beginning  of 
the  sixteenth  century,  had  revived  the  humanities  in  Ger- 
many, amid  general  laughter  at  the  pedantry  of  the  monks. 
Montaigne  and  Moliere,  toward  the  close  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  infused  a  classic  grace  into  the  belles  lettres  of  France, 
with  a  genial  scepticism  which  did  not  yet  need  the  scoff  of 
Voltaire.  Pope  and  Shaftesbury,  at  the  rise  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  arrayed  English  letters  in  the  artificial  graces  of  that 
genteel  deism,  which  had  recoiled  from  what  M.  Taine  calls 
the  Christian  renaissance  of  the  previous  Puritan  age.  At 
length,  toward  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century,  German 
literature  reached  a  like  crisis  in  the  refined  paganism  of  Men- 
delssohn, Lessing  and  Goethe.  And  now,  in  our  own  time,  we 
scarcely  needed  the  laments  of  a  Wordsworth  and  a  Tennyson, 
or  the  satires  of  a  Dickens  and  a  Thackeray,  to  show  us  that 
the  Christian  romanticism  of  Spenser  and  Bunyan  is  gone. 

With  this  literary  apostasy  has  followed  a  like  seculariza- 
tion of  art.     Breaking  loose  from  the  fostering  care  of  the 


CHAP.  III.]  '  Schismatic  Secular  Culture.  309 

Church,  it  has  but  wandered  away  hke  the  prodigal  to  the 
husks  and  the  swine.  In  every  department  there  has  been 
the  same  prostitution  of  beauty  to  error  and  vice.  In  paint- 
ing, the  Madonna  of  Raphael  is  riv-alled  by  the  Venus  of 
Titian.  In  music,  the  oratorio  of  Bach  is  exchanged  for 
the  opera  of  Verdi.  For  the  miracle-plays  and  mysteries 
of  a  believing  age,  are  substituted  comedies  which  turn  life 
into  a  farce  and  religion  into  a  jest.  The  solemn  temples, 
once  reared  for  the  celebration  of  the  awful  tragedy  of  the 
cross,  are  deserted  for  theatres  too  profane  for  even  the  heathen 
Grace?  to  haunt ;  and  there  is  no  collection  of  modern  art 
which  might  not  yield  the  stale  moral  that  the  Christian 
muses  have  fled. 

Not  far  behind  this  degradation  of  art  has  also  proceeded  a 
secularization  of  science.  Issuing  forth  from  the  cloister  as 
with  new-born  freedom,  she  has  been  recruiting  her  votaries 
from  the  world,  until  they  rival  the  priests  and  scholars  of  the 
former  age.  Bacon,  in  his  New  Atlantis,  had  already  dreamed 
of  some  blessed  isle  of  science,  adorned  with  a  Solomon's 
House,  to  whose  mysterious  chambers  physical  observers  were 
returning  from  all  parts  of  the  globe  as  merchants  of  light. 
Cowley,  who  sang  in  stilted  verse  of  the  great  Lord  Chancel- 
lor of  Nature's  laws,  then  projected,  near  London,  his  ideal 
College  of  pure  research  for  the  advancement  of  experimental 
philosophy.  Condorcet,  whose  fragment  on  the  New  Atlan- 
tide  still  more  gravely  treated  the  romance  of  Bacon,  sketched 
his  universal  republic  of  science,  in  which  all  nations  should 
be  joined  together  at  some  centre  like  that  of  English  Ameri- 
ca, in  grand  explorations  and  discoveries  for  the  good  of  the 
human  race.  And  soon,  in  fulfillment  of  such  dreams,  came 
as  much  of  them  as  could  be  made  real.  Among  the  colleges 
of  surpliced  scholars  grew  up  the  Royal  Society  of  London ; 
beside  the  Sorbonne  arose  the  Academy  of  Sciences  at  Paris; 
and  throughout  Christendom,  in  the  very  midst  of  its  Churches, 
spread  that  increasing  fraternity  of  scientific  associations  which 
has  at  length  been  crowned  with  the  Smithsonian  Institution, 
for  the  increase  and  diffusion  of  knowledge  among  men.  The 
crusades  of  the  middle  ages  have  been  matched  by  great  sci- 
entific expeditions  to  the  frozen  North,  to  the  burning  South, 


3IO  Tlie  Breach  in   Civilization.  [part  i. 

to  the  ruins  of  the  East  and  to  the  wilds  of  the  West.  Com- 
municating observatories,  searching  the  heavens  on  all  sides 
of  the  planet,  have  taken  the  place  of  the  old  astrological 
tower.  The  mystic  chamber  of  the  alchemist  has  become  a 
laboratory.  Cabinets,  museums  and  gardens  have  brought 
living  nature  in  full  view  of  the  musty  libraries  of  theology. 
And  science,  the  once  persecuted  child  of  the  Church,  is 
boldly  demanding  admission  to  its  highest  seats  of  classical 
and  sacred  culture.  Professor  Youmans,  in  his  work  on  the 
Culture  demanded  by  Modern  Life,  arrays  the  chief  scientific 
authorities  of  the  age  in  behalf  of  the  new  education.  Mr. 
Herbert  Spencer,  in  his  treatise  on  Education,  makes  science 
the  beginning  and  end  of  all  physical,  mental,  moral  and  reli- 
gious training,  and  predicts  that,  like  Cinderella,  after  having 
been  the  drudge,  she  will  yet  become  the  queen  of  her 
haughtier  sisters  in  the  realm  of  learning.  Mr.  Grote  would 
have  all  religious  instruction  legally  excluded  from  the  aca- 
demic curriculum.  And  great  universities  are  already  seek- 
ing to  banish  Christian  science  as  a  thing  of  the  past. 

At  a  still  more  practical  remove  has  also  issued  the  secu- 
larization of  politics.  Emancipated  from  ecclesiastical  tyranny, 
the  state  in  all  its  forms  and  with  all  its  interests,  has  been 
steadily  asserting  its  independence  of  religious  ideas  and  influ- 
ences, until  now  it  stands  forth  as  the  embodiment  of  mere 
worldly  power  and  grandeur.  At  the  beginning  of  the  move- 
ment the  mediaeval  theocracy,  which  had  held  all  nations  sub- 
ject to  the  Roman  Pontiff,  dissolved  into  a  mass  of  jarring 
monarchies,  settling  at  length  under  the  Balance  of  Power. 
The  succession  of  crusades  which  had  melted  all  Europe  to- 
gether by  one  fiery  impulse,  was  followed  by  the  distracting 
wars  of  Catholic  and  Protestant  states,  terminating  in  a  peace 
at  Westphalia,  which  thenceforth  excluded  religious  questions 
from  the  cabinets  of  statesmen.  The  sacred  compact  of  king, 
lords  and  commons  with  pope,  bishops  and  clergy,  was  ex- 
changed for  the  intestine  wrangle  of  sects  for  place  and  power, 
ending  in  a  mere  state-religion,  as  in  England,  or  in  the  sub- 
jection of  the  Church,  as  in  France,  or  in  its  absolute  separa- 
tion, as  in  the  United  States  ;  and  even  where  the  forced  union 
still  remains,  the  wedge  of  disestablishment  is  already  work- 


CHAP.  III.]  Schismatic  Secular  Culture.  311 

ing,  as  in  Scotland,  Ireland  and  Italy.  And  whilst  these  ex- 
ternal separations  were  proceeding,  still  greater  secular  changes 
have  been  wrought  in  the  very  theory  and  structure  of  the 
State  itself.  That  divine  right  of  government  in  all  its  forms, 
once  so  sacredly  believed,  has  yielded  to  the  notion  of  a  social 
contract  and  written  constitution  ;  that  supreme  rule  of  the 
King  of  kings,  once  universally  acknowledged,  is  obscured  by 
the  ever-boasted  sovereignty  of  the  people ;  and  that  Christi- 
anity, once  potent  throughout  the  state,  is  but  a  public  senti- 
ment so  distant  and  vague  that  the  very  idea  of  a  Christian 
commonwealth  is  treated  as  a  Utopian  dream. 

And  now  at  last,,  in  the  wake  of  all  these  movements,  there 
is  even  an  attempted  secularization  of  religion  itself  The 
New  Christianity  of  St.  Simon  and  Fourier  has  been  followed 
by  the  more  sober  Christian  socialism  of  Maurice  and  Kings- 
ley,  virtually  identifying  the  kingdom  of  Christ  with  the  state 
and  obliterating  the  distinction  between  the  church  and  the 
world.  And  at  length  has  appeared  the  so-called  "Secular- 
ism "  of  Holyoake  and  Conway,  who  would  make  science 
the  only  Providence,  and  exhaust  religion  in  the  duty  of  at- 
tending to  the  present  world,  which  is  certain,  rather  than  a 
future  world  which  is  uncertain.  Scientific  knowledge  is  to 
take  the  place  of  decaying  faith  and  be  propagated  by  zealous 
disciples.  Professor  Tyndall,  as  its  apostle  to  the  new  world, 
eloquently  pleads  for  its  toiling  votaries  that  are  secluded  like 
monks  and  anchorites  from  the  luxury  of  the  times.  Pro- 
fessor Huxley,  as  its  popular  evangelist,  spices  his  Lay 
Sermons  with  a  genuine  polemic  flavor.  And  that  fore- 
runner and  hierophant  of  the  school,  whom  they  still  refuse 
to  own,  Auguste  Comte,  has  already  projected  in  the  grow- 
ing future  a  hierarchy  whose  priests  shall  be  savants,  a 
catechism  which  shall  teach  the  dogmas  of  social  physics, 
and  a  calendar  of  scientific  martyrs  and  heroes  among 
whom  the  Christian  apostles  and  saints  are  not  even  to  be 
named. 

On  the  sacred  side  of  life,  however,  we  behold  a  Chris- 
tianity which,  meanwhile,  has  been  as  steadily  departing 
from  the  accompanying  civilization.  At  the  outset  protesting 
against  the  mere  secular  Christianity  of  the  middle  ages,  it 


312  The  Breach  in  Civilization.  [parti. 

has  vacated,  with  increasing  recoil,  nearly  every  realm  of 
worldly  interest.  It  was  not  strange,  in  the  beginning  at 
least,  that  Protestantism  should  have  made  no  impression  upon 
literature.  Its  leaders  in  the  sixteenth  century,  if  we  except 
Melancthon,  were  too  busy  with  graver  studies  to  cultivate  the 
amenities  of  scholarship.  Luther  could  not  stop  to  choose 
classical  epithets  when  cudgelling  Tetzel,  and,  unlike  the 
modern  Faust,  drove  Mephistopheles  out  of  his  study  with  one 
dramatic  burst  from  his  ink-horn.  Calvin,  it  may  be  conceded 
to  Bishop  Horsely,  did  not  know  how  to  expound  the  prophe- 
cies with  the  taste  of  a  secular  poet,  yet  he  has  passages  which 
might  perhaps  be  oftener  quoted  by  fine  writers,  could  they 
translate  the  austere  grace  of  his  Latinity.  And  because  John 
Knox  made  Scotland  ring  with  his  "  Blast  against  the  Mon- 
strous Regiment  of  Women,"  it  is  seldom  told  with  what  cour- 
teous phrase  he  still  knelt  to  Queen  Mary.  The  authors  of 
Puritanism  in  the  seventeenth  century,  after  we  have  named 
Milton  and  Bunyan,  are  not  among  the  greater  lights  of  Eng- 
lish letters.  Bates,  the  silver-tongued,  has  been  claimed  as  a 
theological  classic  for  his  Harmony  of  the  Divine  Attributes, 
and  Baxter  sometimes  wrote  sentences  which  recall  the  pure 
English  of  the  prayer-book  in  which  he  was  trained.  But 
Owen,  the  great  scholar  of  dissent,  can  be  read  for  no  other 
literary  merit  than  the  robust  utterance  of  vigorous  thought. 
John  Howe,  the  author  of  the  Living  Temple,  indulged  in 
such  a  harsh  and  rugged  style,  that  few  can  now  relish  his 
massive  argument.  And  Rouse,  the  poet  of  the  Westminster 
Assembly,  has  inflicted  upon  successive  generations  to  this 
day,  a  version  of  the  Psalter  which  should  neither  be  said  nor 
sung.  The  Covenanters  had  no  writers  that  could  redeem 
them  from  their  literary  outlawry  by  Scott  and  Burns.  The 
Methodists,  who  might  have  learned  better  from  the  hymns  of 
Wesley,  declared  war  against  literature  as  but  a  vanity  of  the 
world.  And  the  Quakers  actually  tried  to  murder  English 
itself  How  could  the  man  of  letters  be  other  than  a  mere 
worldling  ? 

It  was  not  more  strange,  perhaps,  that  the  whole  region  of 
art  should  likewise  have  been  deserted.  The  reformers,  whilst 
dealing  with    an    aesthetic    ritual   which    expressed    to  them 


CHAP.  III.]  Schismatic  Religious  Culture.  313 

nought  but  pernicious  error,  could  not  be  other  than  icono- 
clasts, and  through  the  successive  phases  of  Puritanism, 
Methodism,  Quakerism  they  passed,  until  they  stood  in  rugged 
antithesis  to  all  the  grace  and  beauty  of  life.  That  architecture, 
which  had  been  based  upon  the  very  form  of  the  cross  and 
aspired  in  bewildering  magnificence  towards  the  same  glorious 
symbol  in  the  heavens,  was  pronounced  a  mere  monument  of 
superstition,  and  exchanged  for  debased  models  of  the  heathen 
temple  or  the  plainer  chapel  and  meeting-house.  The  paint- 
ing, sculpture  and  scenery,  which  had  been  designed  to  exhibit 
the  Christian  altar,  priest  and  sacrifice,  in  storied  light,  amid 
pictured  saints,  apostles  and  martyrs,  were  ruthlessly  defaced  as 
mere  relics  of  idolatry,  or  gradually  replaced  by  the  bare  lec- 
ture-room, pulpit  and  scholar's  gown,  until  even  these  disap- 
peared in  a  meeting  clothed  in  monotonous  drab.  The  music 
and  oratory  which- had  rehearsed,  as  in  high  sacred  opera, 
through  a  trained  choir,  the  versicles,  canticles  and  collects  of 
all  ages,  were  abruptly  translated  into  the  mother-tongue  of 
the  assembly,  together  with  an  incongruous  mixture  of  exhor- 
tations, confessions  and  thanksgivings,  or  were  wholly  repu- 
diated, at  first  for  the  new-made  liturgy  and  stately  sermon ; 
then  for  pulpit  rant  and  random  outcries,  and  at  length  for 
leaden  silence,  broken  only  by  the  sanctimonious  whine.  No 
wonder  the  Muses  were  scared  back  to  their  native  haunts. 

It  was  scarcely  less  surprising  that  the  province  of  science 
should  also  have  been  more  or  less  abandoned.  It  had  been 
the  mistake  of  Protestantism  as  well  as  Catholicism,  not  to 
welcome  betimes  the  new  knowledge  growing  up  beside  them ; 
and  the  educational  policy  of  the  Reformers  and  Puritans 
naturally  fostered  religion  somewhat  at  the  expense  of  sci- 
ence. The  classics,  mathematics  and  metaphysics  of  the 
scholastic  system  were  retained  mainly  as  a  good  foundation 
for  divinity,  while  the  natural  sciences  were  left  to  run  wild 
beyond  the  pale.  The  institutions  of  the  old  world,  as  trans- 
planted to  the  new,  were  broken  into  a  multitude  of  denomi- 
national colleges,  designed  as  nurseries  for  the  ministry,  with 
a  prudent  toleration  of  candidates  for  the  other  learned  pro- 
fessions. The  Faculties  of  Law,  Medicine  and  Philosophy, 
which  had  been  joined  with  Theology,  were  relegated  to  their 


314  Tlie  Breach  in  Civilization.  [part  i. 

respective  votaries,  and  that  of  divinity  erected  into  a  separate 
seminary  or  training-school  for  the  clergy,  founded  on  some 
definite  Church  confession  and  placed  in  a  somewhat  polemic 
or  apologetic  attitude  toward  all  other  learning.  The  whole 
republic  of  science  was  fenced  off  by  the  guards  of  orthodoxy 
as  secular  or  profane,  the  wisdom  of  Egypt  and  mere  spoils 
for  the  children  of  Israel.  What  else  could  result  among  sci- 
entific men  than  a  pagan  worship  of  Nature  ? 

It  was  but  a  further  consequence,  that  the  entire  domain  of 
politics  has  also  been  surrendered  as  essentially  worldly  and 
sinful.  Breaking  loose  from  entangling  alliances  with  the 
state  since  the  Reformation,  the  Church,  in  all  its  forms  and 
with  all  its  powers,  has  been  gradually  separating  itself  from 
political  institutions  and  influences,  until  now  it  appears  as  a 
purely  spiritual  organization,  aiming  only  at  eternal  interests. 
At  the  outset,  the  false  supremacy  of  the  Roman  Papacy  over 
European  monarchies  was  broken  by  the  great  Protestant  re- 
volt ;  to  this  succeeded  the  Puritan  dissent  from  the  Anglican 
prelatical  establishment ;  and  at  length,  in  the  United  States, 
has  followed  the  complete  separation  of  all  churches  and  de- 
nominations from  the  government,  and  their  mutual  indepen- 
dence and  equality  before  the  law.  And  this  result,  so  far 
from  being  enforced  or  deprecated,  has  been  accepted  and 
wrought  into  the  very  theory  and  policy  of  the  Church  itself. 
That  claim  of  an  absolute  theocracy,  once  so  arrogantly  urged 
by  pontiffs  and  prelates,  has  been  exchanged  for  tame  sub- 
mission, voluntary  disestablishment,  and  even  organized  dis- 
sent. That  compulsory  Christian  training  of  the  whole  popu- 
lation, once  so  tenaciously  held  as  the  chief  function  and  duty 
of  the  Church,  has  given  place  to  state-schools,  from  which 
the  Bible  itself  is  to  be  excluded  as  too  sectarian  for  a  text- 
book. And  those  different  forms  of  civil  polity,  once  so  stu- 
diously defended  with  Scriptural  arguments,  have  been  fol- 
lowed by  constitutions  in  which  there  is  no  Christian  idea  or 
name,  and  which  are  often  treated  as  mere  worldly  expedients 
or  organized  revolts,  soon  to  be  crushed  under  the  universal 
monarchy  of  Christ.  Was  it  strange  that  statesmen  should 
study  only  heathen  models  and  the  very  name  of  politician 
become  a  reproach  ? 


CHAP.  III.]  Schismatic  Religious  Culture.  315 

And  now  it  is  only  the  last  result  of  the  growing  rupture, 
that  the  whole  secular  side  of  religion  itself  has  been  abnega- 
ted as  earthly  and. unholy.  Though  it  was  the  boast  of  Pro- 
testantism that  it  came  to  restore  the  humane  virtues  as  well 
as  the  godly  graces  and  to  promote  the  temporal  with  the 
eternal  welfare  of  men,  yet  the  old  ascetic  spirit,  without  the 
causes  which  once  justified  it,  still  shows  itself,  not  merely  in 
a  needless  seclusion  of  the  church  from  the  world,  but  in  a 
harsh  and  false  separation  of  theology  from  practical  ethics,  of 
doctrine  from  daily  duty  and  of  worship  from  common  life. 
Those  gentle  qualities  of  honor,  bravery  and  courtesy,  and 
those  more  sterling  traits  of  honesty,  veracity  and  fidelity  which 
historically  grew  up  with  the  feudal  and  commercial  systems  and 
are  normally  but  the  flower  and  fruitage  of  the  Christian  faith 
are  sometimes  found  disowning  as  well  as  disowned  by  its 
professed  disciples.  The  great  charities  and  philanthropies 
for  the  relief  of  the  poor,  the  sick  and  the  degraded,  which 
were  once  devised  and  managed  by  the  clerical  class  as  their 
fit  prerogative,  have  been  passing  into  secular  hands,  and  are 
often  pursued  in  an  irreligious  spirit.  And  a  sanctimonious 
depreciation  of  whatsoever  things  are  lovely  and  of  good  re- 
port, so  far  from  being  always  unconscious  and  thoughtless, 
has  been  fostered  by  the  teaching  as  well  as  practice  of  cer- 
tain sects  and  parties,  who  inculcate  from  perverted  Scripture 
texts  the  unscriptural  dogmas,  that  human  society  is  too  de- 
praved to  be  regenerated,  that  social  crimes  and  miseries  are 
mcurable,  that  all  natural  virtue  and  morality  are  illusory  and 
worthless;  in  a  word,  that  this  world  is  to  be  abandoned  as 
but  the  kingdom  of  S^tan,  and  the  coming  kingdom  of  Christ 
anticipated  only  as  a  fiery  judgment,  or  sort  of  grand  auto-da 
fe  of  the  whole  existing  civilization.  Is  it  any  marvel  that  re- 
formers have  been  looking  for  another  Gospel  and  a  new  Chris- 
tianity? 

Such  are  the  extreme  issues  of  the  schism  we  have  traced. 
Thus  the  indifferentists,  on  both  sides,  remain  fixed  in  like 
seclusion,  and  in  their  tendency  are  alike  distracting.  So  long 
as  the  two  classes,  the  scientific  and  the  religious,  thus  avoid 
each  other,  a  kind  of  intellectual  duplicity  must  needs  be  fos- 
tered and  rival  arbiters  of  truth  set  up  for  the  decision  of  the 


3i6  Modern  Indiffcrentisin.  [part  i. 

most  momentous  questions.  The  experiment  they  are  making, 
though  unconsciously,  is  that  of  holding  one  thing  in  religion 
and  another  thing  in  science,  or  of  rendering  science  irreligious 
and  religion  unscientific,  while  practically  it  tends  to  an  utter 
divorce  of  Christianity  and  civilization,  with  an  extravagant 
development  of  each,  which  would  only  make  their  collision 
the  more  fearful  and  disastrous,  whenever,  in  any  great  social 
crisis,  they  should  rebound  from  the  forced  separation. 

Now,  as  we  found  it  with  extremism,  so  it  is  with  this  in- 
differentism  :  the  two  parties  proceed  upon  a  false  view  of 
their  normal  relations.  Though  they  are  not  antagonistic,  yet 
neither  are  they  indifferent.  Though  they  need  not  oppose, 
still  less  need  they  avoid  each  other.  However  distinct  may 
be  their  spheres,  there  is,  notwithstanding,  intersection  and 
common  ground.  However  diverse  may  be  their  methods 
and  aims,  there  must  be  interaction  and  harmony.  They,  in 
fact,  presuppose  each  other,  and,  unless  mutually  comple- 
mented, would  be  alike  powerless  and  dead.  Reason  admits 
and  craves  revelation ;  revelation  requires  and  stimulates  rea- 
son. Whenever,  then,  any  separation  arises  between  them, 
this,  too,  is  to  be  treated  as'  anomalous,  and  in  various  ways 
may  be  proven  too  serious  to  be  overlooked  or  palliated. 
^  In  the  first  place,  it  is  a  dismemberment  of  the  very  body 

of  truth.  Even  when  it  involves  no  strife  of  words  or  of 
opinions,  no  collision  between  doctrines  and  theories,  yet  be- 
hind the  show  of  peace  and  concord,  it  leaves  the  natural  sun- 
dered from  the  supernatural,  the  discovered  from  the  revealed, 
the  human  intelligence  from  the  Divine  intelligence.  As  the 
connection  between  nature  and  Scripture  ensures  the  con- 
nection between  science  and  religion,  any  forced  severance  of 
them  simply  tears  truth  from  truth,  which  God  hath  joined 
together. 

In  the  second  place,  this  indifferentism  is  of  an  extent  in- 
volving the  whole  mass  of  knowledge.  Instead  of  remaining 
occasional,  it  has  become  progressive  and  general.  We  have 
described  it  as  a  vast  schism,  which  had  its  historical  origin 
in  the  Reformation,  and  has  since  grown  and  spread  through 
all  the  sciences  with  a  tide  of  increasing  disruption  and  anar- 
chy.    The  time  is  past  when  theology  could  be  called  their 


CHAP.  III.]  Concluding  Argiuncnt.  317 

nurse  and  mistress.  One  after  another  they  have  been  break- 
ing away  from  their  ancient  pupilage  and  running  into  seclu- 
sion and  estrangement,  until  at  last  the  very  idea  of  a  God, 
that  only  bond  which  can  hold  them  together,  even  as  it  alone 
can  give  unity  to  the  totality  of  phenomena  upon  which  they 
proceed,  has  been  formally  ignored,  and  it  has  become  the 
opened  secret  of  the  age  that  infidelity,  once  metaphysical,  is 
now  scientific,  and  science,  once  theological,  is  all  but  athe- 
istic. 

If  we  seek  the  traces  of  this  great  rupture,  we  find  them 
conspicuous,  not  merely  in  breaches  or  separations,  but  also 
in  actual  controversies,  waged  at  every  point  of  contact  along 
the  entire  range  of  secular  and  sacred  learning.  As  we  have 
seen,  there  is  no  science  in  which  natural  facts  are  not  left  de- 
tached from  revealed  truths,  and  revealed  doctrines  directly 
menaced  by  rational  theories ;  while  in  the  eminent  domain 
of  philosophy  itself,  we  have  the  two  opposing  lines  marshalled, 
as  if  for  a  last  decisive  encounter,  by  systems  which  array  the 
embodied  results  of  human  research  against  divine  revelation, 
upon  the  avowed  principle  that  science,  by  the  law  of  its 
growth,  can  only  subsist  upon  the  extinction  of  theology,  and 
is  destined  at  once  to  destroy  and  supersede  it.  Thus  that 
body  of  knowledge,  commonly  regarded  as  most  exact  and 
certain,  is  fast  detaching  itself  from  that  body  of  knowledge 
long  esteemed  most  sacred  and  beneficent.  And  a  feeling  of 
the  rupture  may  be  said  to  pervade  the  whole  community  of 
scholars,  ranging  between  the  extreme  of  confident  scepticism 
on  the  one  side,  and  vague  misgiving  on  the  other,  with  an 
unsatisfactory  suspension  of  judgment  among  the  conservative 
classes  between  them  ;  while  among  the  masses,  following  the 
course  of  all  great  intellectual  movements,  it  is  already  diffu- 
sing popular  influences,  which  may  survive  long  after  it  shall 
have  received  sentence  at  the  tribunal  of  philosophy. 

In  the  third  place,  such  indififerentism  is,  in  its  issue,  fraught 
with  the  direst  evils.  No  mere  war  of  words  or  strife  of  logic, 
it  is  already  unfolding  its  disastrous  effects  in  every  sphere  of 
human  interest. 

As  the  first  class  of  such  evils  may  be  cited  that  ver}^  anar- 
chy of  the  sciences  which  has   been  described.     Only  the 


3i8  Modern  Indiffcrcntism,  [part  i. 

charlatan  of  the  one  side,  or  the  bigot  of  the  other,  could  be 
blind  to  the  wild  confusion  and  strife  which  now  reign  through- 
out the  intellectual  domain.  The  genuine  lover  of  truth,  for 
its  own  sake,  on  whichever  side  he  may  be  found,  instinctively 
recoils  from  this  widening  breach  between  our  knowledge  of 
the  works  and  of  the  word  of  God,  and  craves  all  possible  re- 
conciliation, if  only  as  an  intellectual  necessity  and  a  rational 
ideal.  That  two  such  vast  bodies  of  science  cannot  ever  re- 
main apart  and  at  variance,  but  must  ultimately  coalesce  in 
some  logical  system,  is  at  once  a  yearning  and  a  presentiment 
of  the  philosophic  mind.  Next  in  strength  and  nobleness  to 
the  instinct  which  longs  to  have  all  truth,  is  that  which  longs 
to  have  all  truth  consistent  with  itself 

As  a  second  class  of  evils,  and  consequent  upon  the  former, 
may  be  named  that  derangement  of  the  educational  system, 
secularization  of  learning  and  sectarianism  of  the  professions, 
in  which  the  great  schism  has  practically  expressed  itself 
The  mere  pedants  of  either  side,  sundered  by  professional  an- 
tipathies that  render  them  almost  incapable  of  appreciating 
each  other's  peculiar  enthusiasm,  will  indeed  be  content  with 
routine  labors  and  special  researches,  and  seek  no  intellectual 
commerce  beyond  their  own  provinces ;  but  original  seekers 
for  truth  and  actual  contributors  to  the  world's  stock  of  know- 
ledge in  all  the  walks  of  learning,  soon  find  themselves  meet- 
ing together  on  the  high  ground  of  first  principles,  and  in  pro- 
portion as  they  thus  realize  a  community  of  opinions  and  aims, 
will  they  escape  hurtful  collision  and  promote  each  his  own 
beneficent  mission.  In  seeking  thus  to  found  the  catholicity 
of  learning  upon  the  unity  of  science,  philosophy  puts  on  the 
garb  of  philanthropy,  and  the  lover  of  truth  becomes  also  a 
lover  of  his  kind. 

As  a  third  and  still  more  obvious  class  of  evils,  may  be 
mentioned  that  scepticism  in  religion,  radicalism  in  politics, 
and  sensualism  in  art,  both  industrial  and  c-esthetic,  which  are 
the  final  results  of  such  schismatic  knowledge  and  culture. 
A  few  extremists  may  affect  to  regard  this  sore  conflict  be- 
tween reason  and  authority,  order  and  progress,  material  and 
spiritual  culture  as  normal,  necessary  or  incurable;  but  there 
arc,  this  hour,  in  all  lands  and  classes,  enthusiastic  believers 


CHAP.  III.]  Concluding  Argimicnt.  319 

in  social  regeneration  as  at  once  within  the  vision  of  prophecy 
and  the  scope  of  history.  And  it  is  by  the  disappearance  of 
the  sectarianism  of  science  alone  that  they  may  hope  for  the 
disappearance  of  the  sectarianism  of  learning,  religion  and 
politics.  For,  since  the  ideas  of  philosophers  at  length  be- 
come the  opinions  of  the  people,  a  logical  compact  of  truth 
and  knowledge  among  thinkers  and  scholars  must,  sooner  or 
later,  be  followed  by  a  practical  compact  of  institutions  and 
interests  among  the  masses.  In  thus  striving  after  the  per- 
fection of  science,  philosophy  comes  to  the  aid  of  humanity  in 
its  effort  after  the  perfection  of  society. 

It  is  indeed  true,  as  has  already  been  hinted,  that  each  of 
these  great  evils  may  have  some  incidental  and  compensating 
good.  This  dissection  of  the  sciences,  in  so  far  as  it  is  merely 
artificial  and  logical,  may  be  as  convenient  as  it  is  unavoida- 
ble; this  professional  zeal  and  academic  prejudice,  by  dividing 
the  task  of  philosophy,  may  promote  research  and  ambition  ; 
and  even  the  social  conflicts  of  diverse  creeds,  theories  and 
systems,  by  carrying  the  battle  of  civilization  from  the  region 
of  thought  into  that  of  action,  may  only  the  more  conspicu- 
ously relieve  truth  and  virtue  against  error  and  vice.  But 
when  we  have  duly  acknowledged  such  mercies  of  our  tran- 
sitional state,  there  still  remain  the  duty  and  the  testimony  of 
further  progress  and  higher  improvement.  Even  while  we 
hail  such  straggling  gleams  of  light,  we  only  see  the  darkness 
more  plainly  and  long  for  the  day-spring. 

In  this  manner  is  it  to  be  shown  that  the  two  interests, 
though  they  may  not  be  in  a  state  of  deadly  warfare,  are, 
nevertheless,  in  a  state  of  direful  schism,  for  the  healing  of 
which  their  respective  advocates  should  yearn  and  labor. 
When  either  the  scientist  would  dream  of  dispensing  with  re- 
ligion, or  the  religionist  of  dispensing  with  science,  let  both 
remember  the  vital  bonds  which  join  them  in  a  blessed  mar- 
riage, and  dread  any  coldness  between  them,  as  alike  with  any 
conflict,  fatal  to  the  cause  of  truth  and  humanity. 


CHAPTER    IV. 


^        MODERN  ECLECTICISM  BETWEEN  SCIENCE  AND 

RELIGION. 


No  more  thrilling  sight  could  be  imagined  than  that  of 
two  great  armies  meeting  in  the  shock  of  battle.  We  picture 
the  scene  as  the  inevitable  collision  approaches.  The  skir- 
mish, the  truce,  the  parley  are  at  an  end ;  the  ranks  are  re- 
called to  arms  ;  the  grand  charge  is  ordered ;  the  combatants 
rush  together  and  disappear  behind  the  clouds  of  war.  In 
that  one  supreme  moment  there  is  the  very  sublimity  of 
human  hope  and  daring.  But  while  yet  we  gaze  and  wonder, 
the  smoke  clears  away  and  we  behold  simply  both  armies 
fleeing  from  each  other  in  the  wildest  confusion,  neither  left 
master  of  the  field. 

And  it  is  thus  that  certain  ardent  votaries  of  philosophy,  as 
Sir  William  Hamilton  phrases  it,  "  would  carry  the  Absolute 
by  assault,"  vainly  endeavoring  to  conquer  the  totality  of 
knowledge,  divine  and  human,  by  one  heroic  effort  of  the  in- 
tellect. Or,  as  Lord  Bacon  has  expressed  it,  "  some  modern 
men,  guilty  of  much  levity,  by  an  unadvised  mixture  of  things 
divine  and  human  have  essayed  to  build  a  system  of  natural 
philosophy  on  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis,  the  Book  of  Job, 
and  other  places  of  Holy  Writ,  seeking  the  living  among  the 
dead." 

We  have  termed  this  class  of  thinkers,  whether  they  appear 

on  the  side  of  religion  or  of  science,  the  Eclectics,  or  Impa- 

tients,  because  they  are  in  haste  to  combine  their  several 

fruits  of  research,  the  one  overlooking  the  claims  of  reason, 

320 


CHAP.  IV.]  Religious  Eclecticism.  321 

and  the  other,  the  claims  of  revelation.  No  border  question 
can  arise  between  science  and  Scripture  which  they  will  not  at 
once  force  to  a  settlement.  Already  sure  of  the  ideal  unity 
of  truth,  they  would  also  make  sure  of  the  ultimate  system  of 
knowledge  and  range  over  each  other's  domain  in  search  of 
materials  for  its  construction;  while  in  the  sphere  of  practice, 
they  will  straightway  organize  upon  its  basis  the  ultimate 
system  of  society.  In  a  word,  they  are  the  knights-errant  of 
philosophy  who  sally  forth  to  conquer  all  knowledge  by  the 
force  of  genius  or  logic  and  reform  the  world  single-handed. 

In  contrast  with  both  the  Extremists  and  the  Indifferentists, 
they  are  in  no  degree  averse  to  the  great  reconciliation  of 
divine  and  human  knowledge,  but  are  simply  inapt  or  unfit 
for  the  task.  Though  impressed  with  the  necessity  and  im- 
portance of  the  work  and  themselves  rightly  inclined  towards 
it,  yet  from  some  defect  of  intellectual  temperament  or  train- 
ing, from  a  too  ardent  imagination  or  versatile  fancy,  or  from 
an  excessive  love  of  symmetry,  or  from  a  habit  of  hasty 
generalization,  or  from  a  lack  of  special  knowledge,  they  fail 
to  bring  the  two  interests  into  perfect  understanding  and 
rational  agreement.  We  proceed  to  sketch  them  more  par- 
ticularly according  to  the  method  hitherto  pursued. 

The  religionist  of  this  eclectic  spirit  is  in  haste  to  appro- 
priate into  his  creed  the  whole  existing  product  of  reason. 
Throughout  the  rational  province  of  each  science  he  strays, 
sifting  theories  and  culling  facts  to  be  wrought  into  his 
exegesis,  in  support  of  his  own  theological  opinions  and 
beliefs.  Indeed,  he  never  enters  the  field  of  research  but  with 
some  foregone  dogma  of  the  church  or  private  interpretation 
of  Scripture  which  he  wishes  to  uphold  with  extraneous  aid  or 
illustration ;  and  there  is  no  physical  hypothesis  so  crude,  no 
metaphysical  speculation  so  rash,  that  he  will  not  compel  it  to 
do  service  in  his  apologetical  or  polemical  tactics.  Science  is 
simply  degraded  by  him  from  a  handmaid  of  theology  to  a 
slave  and  put  to  the  drudgery  of  propagandism. 

The  scientist  of  this  eclectic  spirit  is  in  haste  to  appropriate 
into  his  system  the  whole  existing  product  of  revelation. 
From  the  revealed  section  of  each  science  he  draws  doctrines 
and  texts  to  be  woven  into  his  researches,  in  support  of  his 

2Q 


322 


Religious  Eclecticism.  [part  i. 


own  scientific  discoveries  and  speculations.  In  fact,  he  never 
resorts  to  the  Bible  but  with  some  foregone  theory  of  science 
or  tentative  hypothesis  of  his  own,  for  which  he  seeks  divine 
authority  and  confirmation;  and  there  is  no  text  too  far- 
fetched, no  dogma  too  absurd  to  be  pressed  into  a  proof  or 
illustration  of  his  physical  and  metaphysical  opinions.  Theo- 
logy, queen  of  the  sciences,  is  degraded  by  him  into  a  mere 
vassal  and  chained  to  the  chariot  of  progress. 

History  yields  examples  of  this  impatience,  in  both  of  its 
forms,  wherever  society  has  presented  that  spectacle  of  con- 
flicting opinions  and  interests  which,  as  M.  Guizot  says,  is 
so  revolting  to  a  certain  class  of  great  minds  that  they  feel  an 
unconquerable  desire  to  introduce  order  and  unity.  It  was 
somewhat  of  this  spirit,  under  its  scientific  phase,  which  im- 
pelled the  later  disciples  of  Plato,  in  the  vain  hope  of  conquer- 
ing a  peace  among  philosophers,  to  collect  out  of  the  ruins  of 
the  last  Gentile  philosophy  that  huge  agglomerate  of  systems. 
Eastern  and  Western,  Greek  and  Roman,  known  as  the  Neo- 
Platonism.  It  was  somewhat  of  this  spirit,  under  its  religious 
phase,  which  hurried  the  later  Greek  fathers,  such  as  Clement 
and  Origen,  into  that  crude  amalgam  of  sacred  and  profane 
learning  which  was  all  that  survived  the  wreck  of  the  first 
Christian  philosophy.  And  even  among  the  later  Latin 
schoolmen,  after  scholasticism  had  narrowed  the  peripatetic 
within  the  pale  of  the  church,  there  arose  now  and  then  some 
towering  genius,  such  as  Roger  Bacon  and  Albert,  whose  ex- 
panded vision  and  encyclopaedic  lore  were  but  lofty  expres- 
sions of  the  same  spirit.  But  as  it  was  reserved  for  the 
Reformation  to  introduce  the  great  schism  of  divine  and 
human  knowledge,  described  in  the  last  chapter,  together  with 
a  consequent  anarchy  of  sects  and  schools,  so  it  was  not  until 
our  own  times  that  there  could  spring  up  any  of  that  intel- 
lectual impatience,  that  heroic  love  of  truth  and  order,  which 
the  strange  antagonism  or  stranger  indifference  of  the  other 
parties  is  but  fitted  to  excite  and  to  aggravate.  And  hence  we 
already  behold  in  both  quarters  an  ardent  eclecticism,  more  or 
less  crude  and  rash,  which  would  immediately  press  all  re- 
ligion into  the  support  of  science  or  force  all  science  into  the 
service  of  religion. 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  in  Astronomy.  323 

Let  it  be  carefully  premised  before  we  proceed  to  sketch 
some  illustrations  of  this  spirit,  that  in  order  to  make  them 
complete  and  serviceable,  it  will  be  proper  to  include  in  the 
class  of  religious  eclectics  all  who  do  not  proceed  philosophi- 
cally in  their  endeavor  to  harmonize  scientific  facts  and  bibli- 
cal truths,  and  among  them  many  who  may  have  the  true 
cognitive  theory  latent  in  their  minds  without  elaborating  it, 
and  whose  work,  therefore,  will  endure  and  appear  in  the  final 
system  of  knowledge.  But  it  obviously  forms  no  part  of  our 
present  task  to  discriminate  any  such  verified  hypotheses  as 
will  thus  survive  the  mere  sagacious  conjectures  which  may 
pass  away.  Of  all  the  innumerable  systems  and  opinions  pre- 
sented in  our  previous  history  of  the  sciences,  there  is  prob- 
ably not  one  which  has  not  been  wrought  into  conscious 
connection  with  the  Bible  ;  and  while  some  of  these  construc- 
tions already  form  an  integral  part  of  the  temple  of  truth, 
others  are  still  regarded  by  their  own  authors  as  purely  ten- 
tative and  problematical,  and  still  others  were  never  offered  as 
aught  else  than  the  mere  recreations  of  a  devout  fancy. 

Surveying  first  the  physical  sciences,  we  shall  there  see  the 
ranks  of  the  sciolists  and  dogmatists  ever  and  anon  broken  by 
eager  divines  or  devout  naturalists,  who  for  centuries  have 
been  sallying  into  each  other's  domain  without  making  per- 
manent conquests  of  truth,  until  the  border  fields  of  religion 
and  science  appear  strown  with  exploded  errors  and  fantastic 
speculations,  like  antique  armor  made  ridiculous  by  modern 
warfare. 

Eclecticism  in  Astronomy. 

The  whole  scientific  astronomy  has  thus  been  i-nvaded  and 
traversed  by  the  eclectic  spirit.  From  the  beginning  the 
existing  system  of  celestial  physics,  whatever  it  might  be,  has 
been  claimed  as  a  province  of  natural  theology  for  the  illustra- 
tion of  the  divine  power,  wisdom  and  goodness.  During  the 
reign  of  the  Ptolemaic  hypothesis,  for  nearly  thirteen  centuries, 
the  scriptural  firmament  variously  described  as  an  expanse,  a 
canopy,  a  mirror,  was  supposed  to  consist  of  numerous 
crystalline  spheres  one  within  another,  attached  to  the  sun, 
moon  and  stars,  and  turned  round  the  earth  by  the  hands  of 


324  Eclecticism  in  Astronomy.  [part  i. 

angels,  in  order  to  produce  the  beneficent  vicissitudes  of  day 
and  night,  and  summer  and  winter.  While  the  old  astronomy- 
was  yet  on  the  wane.  Lord  Bacon  found  the  Book  of  Job  still 
pregnant  with  its  secrets ;  tracing  allusions  to  the  convexity 
of  the  heavens  as  stretched  over  the  pendent  earth ;  to  the 
immutable  configuration  of  the  fixed  stars,  the  Pleiades, 
Arcturus  and  Orion  as  ever  gently  bound  to  the  same  relative 
position  in  the  revolving  skies ;  and  to  the  invisible  constella- 
tions of  the  opposite  hemisphere  as  hidden  in  the  chambers 
of  the  south.  More  than  twenty-five  years  after  the  demon- 
strations of  Newton,  the  Dutch  savant,  Nieuwentyt,  adhering 
to  the  transitional  scheme  which  Tycho  Brahe  had  devised  as 
a  compromise  with  theology,  continued  to  expound  the  divine 
wisdom  and  goodness  in  enchasing  the  stars  upon  a  solid 
sphere  concentric  with  the  earth.  M.  Theodore  Martin,  in 
his  treatise  on  the  Trial  of  Galileo,  mentions  the  elaborate 
works  of  numerous  forgotten  writers  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  such  as  Morin,  Rocco,  Chiaramonti,  Accarisio, 
Alexander  Rosse,  Dubois,  Scheiner,  Kirchmaier,  Fabri,  Her- 
binius,  and  some  even  in  the  present  century,  such  as  De 
Bonald,  Matalene,  Lacheze,  and  Wrangler,  who  have  con- 
tinued to  advocate  the  repose  of  the  earth  and  the  motion  of 
the  heavens  in  the  supposed  interest  of  biblical  truth.  And 
the  same  geocentric  error  is  still  practically  countenanced  by 
natural  theologians  who  represent  the  solar  system  as  con- 
trived for  human  advantage  alone,  and  the  innumerable 
heavenly  worlds  as  having  no  other  or  higher  purpose  than 
mere  chronometrical  signs  and  luminaries  to  our  little 
planet. 

But  with  the  rise  of  the  modern  astronomy  came  renewed 
efforts  to  extract  its  religious  lessons.  The  earlier  astronomers 
themselves,  such  as  Copernicus,  Kepler  and  Newton,  did  not 
scruple  to  mingle  pious  reflections  with  their  scientific  discus- 
sions. Richard  Bentley,  the  first  Boyle  Lecturer,  in  his  ser- 
mons on  the  "Confutation  of  Atheism  from  a  Survey  of  the 
Origin  and  Frame  of  the  World,"  expounded  the  Principia  of 
Newton  against  the  Epicurean  doctrine  of  eternal  matter  and 
motion,  at  the  same  time  unfolding  scientifically  that  ancient 
proof  of  the  divine  beauty  and  order  of  the  firmament,  the 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  in  Astronomy,  325 

cosmos  and  mundus,  which  kindled  the  adoration  of  Plato 
and  Cicero  no  less  than  of  Moses  and  David.  William  Dcr- 
ham,  the  learned  Canon  of  Windsor,  whose  once  popular 
"Astro-theology"  seems  to  have  been  the  first  distinct  treatise 
of  the  kind,  also  demonstrated  the  being  and  attributes  of 
God  from  a  survey  of  the  heavens,  especially  enlarging  upon 
the  usefulness  of  the  celestial  globes  as  then  for  the  first  time 
becoming-  apparent  in  their  ascertained  figures,  motions,  orbits, 
and  attractions.  The  versatile  Whiston,  in  like  manner, 
treated  of  the  "Astronomical  Principles  of  Natural  and  Re- 
vealed Religion,"  on  the  basis  of  the  Newtonian  philosophy. 
And  the  same  argument  was  continued  by  Ray  and  Paley. 
Dr.  Whewell,  in  his  Bridgewater  Treatise  on  the  "  Connection 
of  Astronomy  with  Natural  Theology,"  still  more  scientifically 
vindicated  the  benevolent  design  of  the  cosmical  arrangements 
against  the  insinuation  of  La  Place  that  it  was  easy  to  con- 
ceive of  a  better  solar  system.  The  late  Professor  Ormsby 
Mitchell  in  his  "Astronomy  of  the  Bible,"  not  only  sought  to 
illustrate  the  divine  omnipotence,  eternity,  immutability,  and 
wisdom  from  the  celestial  mechanism,  but  to  discern  an  occult 
inspired  acquaintance  with  it  in  the  very  language  of  the 
Scriptures.  It  has  been  claimed  that  the  Hebrew  expression 
in  Job,  "  the  sockets  of  the  earth,"  implied  a  knowledge  of  its 
diurnal  rotation,  and  that  in  the  binding  "  influences  of  the 
Pleiades"  there  is  an  anticipatory  allusion  to  the  revolution  of 
the  solar  and  other  astral  systems  about  a  centre  of  universal 
gravity  which  Madler  has  placed  in  that  constellation.  The 
author  of  the  ingenious  little  treatise,  "  The  Stars  and  the 
Earth,"  has  derived  an  illustration  of  the  Divine  omniscience 
and  Book  of  Judgment  from  the  velocity  of  inter-planetary 
light,by  supposing  an  observer  receding  from  star  to  star,  with 
an  increasing  vision  of  events  after  their  occurrence,  and  thus 
enabled  to  review  the  entire  history  of  the  earth  from  the  pre- 
sent day  to  the  time  of  Christ,  from  thence  to  the  calling  of 
Abraham,  to  the  Flood,  back  to  the  new-born  world,  with  the 
morning  stars  shouting  over  it  for  joy.  And  other  more 
popular  writers,  such  as  Professor  Nicol  in  his  Architecture 
of  the  Heavens,  Dr.  Thomas  Dick  in  his  Celestial  Scenery, 
and   Dr.  Burr  in  his  Ecce  Caelum  and  Pater  Mundi,  have 


326  Eclecticism  in  Astronomy.  [part  i. 

aimed  to  render  astronomy  not  only  instructive   and  enter- 
taining, but  tributary  to  practical  religion  and  piety. 

It  is,  however,  in  the  speculative  domain  of  the  science,  in  the 
treatment  of  questions  concerning  the  origin  and  design  of  the 
heavenly  worlds,  that  the  religious  eclectic  has  loved  to  revel. 
Q,  The  nebular  hypothesis  had  scarcely  been  formed  before  it 
was  seized  as  the  Biblical  cosmogony  or  doctrine  of  creation. 
It  is  true,  that  such  germs  of  the  hypothesis  as  had  appeared 
in  the  systems  of  Epicurus  and  Lucretius  were  not  employed 
by  the  fathers  or  schoolmen  or  reformers,  all  of  whom  were 
naturally  led  to  interpret  Genesis  from  a  geogonic  as  well  as  a 
geocentric  point  of  view,  regarding  the  visible  heavens  as  a 
mere  appurtenance  or  atmosphere  of  the  earth.  It  is  true 
also,  that  the  first  modern  cosmogonists,  Descartes,  Leibnitz, 
and  Kant,  though  assuming  the  Scripture  doctrine  of  crea- 
tion as  the  covert  basis  of  their  speculations,  did  not  attempt 
to  reconcile  the  former  with  the  latter,  as  their  only  aim  was 
to  show  how  the  worlds  might  or  should  have  been  created. 
But  later  cosmogonists  and  divines  have  sought  more  directly 
to  combine  the  views  of  Herschel  and  La  Place  with  those  of 
the  sacred  writers.  The  author  of  the  "  Vestiges  of  Creation  " 
distinctly  stated  his  belief,  that  the  nebular  hypothesis  might 
be  reconciled  with  the  Scriptures.  Schubert,  when  he  held 
that  hypothesis,  described  the  dim  back-ground  of  the  heavens 
as  one  unbroken  nebulous  cloud  which  could  not  resolve 
itself  into  luminous  shapes  and  glowing  spheres  of  sun  and 
planet  until  it  felt  the  energy  of  the  divine  command  to  bring 
forth  worlds.  Whewell  also  maintained  that,  for  the  enkin- 
dling of  such  a  dark,  inorganic  mass,  reason  conspires  with 
revelation  in  requiring  the  creative  mandate,  "  Let  there  be 
light,"  and  boldly  depicted  the  forming  planets,  stars,  and 
nebulae  as  lumps  which  have  flown  from  the  potter's  wheel  of 
the  Great  Maker,  sparks  which  darted  from  His  awful  anvil 
when  the  solar  system  lay  incandescent  thereon,  and  curls 
of  vapor  which  rose  from  the  vast  caldron  of  creation.  The 
late  Professor  Ormsby  Mitchell,  in  his  Biblical  Astronomy, 
declared  the  correspondence  between  the  nebular  hypothesis 
and  the  Mosaic  cosmogony  to  be  as  exact  as  any  current 
fulfillment   of  prophecy.      And     accordingly    some     recent 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclccticisjii  in  Astronomy.  327 

advocates  of  the  hypothesis  have  sought  for  distinct  references 
to  it  in  various  parts  of  the  Bible.  Frederick  de  Rougemont, 
in  his  "Revelation  and  the  Physical  Sciences,"  having  distin- 
guished the  first  three  pre-solar  days  as  the  astronomical  part 
of  the  hexaemeron,  proceeded  to  identify  the  formless  void 
of  Moses  with  the  nebulous  abyss  of  La  Place  and  the  upper 
and  lower  waters  of  the  firmament  with  the  gaseous  masses 
which  broke  into  fiery  suns  and  planets,  while  one  of  them 
cooled  and  condensed  as  the  solar  system  including  our  earth. 
Professor  Tayler  Lewis  has  ingeniously  likened  this  stage  of 
the  creative  process,  with  its  waters  above  and  waters  be- 
neath, to  the  spectacle  which  might  now  be  presented  to  an 
observer  of  the  aqueous  rings  of  Saturn,  if  he  could  view 
them  from  the  body  of  that  planet.  Professor  Guyot,  in  his 
memoir  on  "Cosmogony  and  the  Bible,"  suggests  that  the 
"waters  above  the  heavens,"  of  which  the  Psalmist  speaks, 
are  the  primitive  nebulae  variously  distributed  in  celestial 
space  by  Herschel,  Madler,  and  Alexander,  and  describes 
their  division,  concentration,  and  organization  into  suns  and 
planets  as  respectively  the  works  of  the  first  three  creative 
days.  Similar  views  are  held  by  Dr.  John  Baptiste  Baltzer,  of 
the  Roman  Catholic  Faculty  of  Breslau,  who  maintains  in  his 
profound  "Biblical  History  of  Creation"  that  the  formless 
earth  and  lightless  water  of  Genesis  indicate  the  primitive  mat- 
ter and  universal  ether,  out  of  which  by  so-called  Neptunian  and 
Plutonian  processes  were  formed  nebulae,  suns  and  planets; 
and  that  in  the  first,  second  and  fourth  days  this  cosmogony 
or  development  of  the  celestial  cosmos  proceeds  in  accord- 
ance with  the  spectroscopic  discoveries  of  modern  astronomy, 
while  in  the  third,  fifth  and  sixth  days  has  occurred  the 
geogony  or  development  of  our  planet  in  accordance  with  the 
results  of  palaeontology. 

The  plurality  of  inhabited  worlds  is  another  hypothesis 
which  has  been  blended  with  the  Biblical  angelology  or  doc- 
trine of  angels.  For  thousands  of  years  the  traditional 
conception  of  other  worlds  had  been  predetermined  by  a 
geocentric  system,  and  the  Olympus  and  Orcus  of  Homer, 
the  Elysium  and  Tartarus  of  Virgil,  the  Paradiso  and  Inferno 
of  Dante,  were  alike  placed  above  and  beneath  the  visible 


328  Eclecticism  in  Astronomy.  [part  i. 

plane  of  the  earth.     Even  the  Heaven  and   Hell  of  Milton 
remained    tinctured    with    Ptolemaic   views.      But   with    the 
downfall  of  that  hypothesis  came  efforts  to  adjust  the  angelic 
hierarchy  to  the  new  Copernican  system  of  suns,  planets'  and 
satellites.     In  the  very  treatise  of  Galileo  may  be  found  some 
epistles  of  his  friend  Antonio  Foscarinus,  a  Carmelite  friar, 
designed   to   reconcile  the   new   theory  with   orthodoxy  by 
showing  how  the  earth,  as  it  moved  in  its  orbit,  might  retain 
its    central    hells  and  concentric  heavens  as  still  apparently 
above  and  beneath  its  inhabitants.     Bishop  Wilkins,  one  of  the 
first  advocates  of  the  Copernican  system  in  England,  and  a 
founder  of  the  Royal  Society,  published  a  scientific  romance 
entitled  the  "  Discovery  of  a  New  World,"  in  which  he  cited 
the  fathers  and  schoolmen  to  prove  the  Moon  is  paradise,  and 
thought  it  not  impossible  that  posterity  might  have  commerce 
with   the   Lunarians  by  means   of  flying  ships   or   chariots 
fashioned  like  a  wooden  eagle.     Devout  astronomers,  such  as 
Huygens  and  Newton,  so  far  from  treating  the  idea  of  inhabi- 
ted worlds  with  the  levity  of  Fontanelle,  thought  it  consonant 
with  the  Scriptures,  even  if  not  explicitly  revealed.     In  later 
times,  the  Herschels    and  Arago  have  agreed  with  Bode  in 
peopling  the  sun  with  the  children  of  light,  sheltered  behind 
his  luminous  corona  as  within  the  very  glory  of  the  Almighty. 
And  orthodox  divines  have  sought  for  direct  correspondence 
between  the  astronomical  and  Biblical  realms  of  intelligence. 
Dr.  Tholuck  could  fancy  the  redeemed  finding  a  congenial 
abode  in  the  fair  savannahs  of  Venus  or  the  bright  plains  of 
Mars,  while  the  lost  were  consigned  to  the  dreary  wastes  of 
Jupiter  or  the  dismal  craters  of  the  Moon.     Dr.  Thomas  Dick 
made  his  "  Christian  Philosopher  "  speculate  upon  the  magni- 
ficent scenery  of  Saturn  with  his  belted  skies,  Jupiter  with  his 
procession  of  moons,  and  the  fixed  stars  with  their  dazzling 
suns  as  seats  of  life  and  intelligence  adorned  by  the  Creator 
for  the  worshiping  host  of  heaven.     Eloquent  preachers  de- 
scanting upon  the  fancy  of  Bradley  and  Madler  have  sup- 
posed the  central  sun  may  be  the  royal  seat  and  court  of  the 
great  Creator  and  Governor  of  worlds,  around  whom  adoring 
suns  and  planets  revolve  as  tributary  provinces  in  obedient 
loyalty  and  praise.     Professor  Lange,  uniting  the  speculations 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  in  Astronomy.  329 

of  Herschcl  with  the  revelations  of  St.  John,  in  his  "  Land  of 
Glory,"  hailed  the  innumerable  orbs  beyond  our  solar  system, 
as  the  many  mansions  of  our  Father's  house,  the  New  Jeru- 
salem above,  where  they  need  no  light  of  the  sun  nor  of  the 
moon,  the  very  heaven  of  heavens  and  holy  of  holies  into 
which  Christ  hath  triumphantly  ascended.  And  Dr.  Kurtz,  in 
his  "  Biblical  Astronomy,"  rising  to  a  still  higher  flight  has 
claimed  the  fixed  stars  with  their  luminous,  refined  structure, 
as  abodes  of  those  pure  angels  who  can  know  neither  birth  nor 
death  and  who  stood  nearest  the  throne  of  glory  as  the  eldest 
children  of  the  Creator  when  the  foundations  of  the  earth  were 
laid,  while  the  morning  stars  sang  together  and  all  the  sons 
of  God  shouted  for  joy.  Shakspeare  would  seem  to  have 
unconsciously  expressed  the  same  thought  as  suggested  by 
the  contemplation  of  the  starry  heavens: 

"There's  not  the  meanest  orb,  which  thou  behold'st, 
But  in  his  motion  like  an  angel  sings. 
Still  quiring  to  the  young-eyed  cherubims ; 
Such  harmony  is  in  immortal  souls." 

Such  cosmical  speculations  have  even  been  combined  with 
the  biblical  soteriology  or  doctrine  of  salvation.  The  descent 
of  Christ  into  Hell  and  His  ascent  into  Heaven  seem  to  be 
acquiring  a  new  astronomical  significance.  Though  at  first 
orthodox  divines  such  as  Bellarmin  and  Melancthon  repu- 
diated the  idea  of  inhabited  planets  as  inconsistent  with  the 
moral  importance  of  the  earth,  the  incarnation  of  Christ,  and 
the  redemption  of  man,  and  regarded  them  as  mythical 
and  monstrous  as  the  fathers  had  regarded  their  antipodes ; 
yet  when  the  idea  of  other  celestial  orbs  and  races  had  become 
plausible  and  familiar,  ingenious  efforts  were  made  to  connect 
them  spiritually  as  well  as  materially  with  our  world  and 
embrace  them  somehow  within  the  scheme  of  the  Christian 
revelation,  as  either  fallen  or  unfallen,  and  therefore  to  be 
either  saved  or  confirmed  in  safety  through  the  infinite 
efiicacy  of  the  Cross,  by  the  incidental  merits  of  a  Saviour  of 
whom  the  whole  family  in  heaven  and  earth  is  named.  As  if 
to  start  such  curious  problems,  Dr.  Young,  in  his  Night 
Thoughts,  imagined  himself  interrogating  the  inhabitants  of  a 


330  Eclecticism  in  Astronomy.  [part  i. 

distant  star  as  to  how  far  their  moral  history  corresponds  with 
our  own : 

"  Enjoy  your  happy  realms  their  golden  age  ? 
And  had  your  Eden  an  abstemious  Eve  ? 
Or,  if  your  mother  fell,  are  you  redeemed  ? 
And,  if  redeemed,  is  your  Redeemer  scorned  ?  " 

And  to  such  questions  various  answers  have  been  given  by 
equally  orthodox  writers.  Dr.  Chalmers,  in  those  magnificent 
prose-poems,  his  Astronomical  Discourses,  on  the  supposition 
that  our  earth  is  the  only  lost  world,  combined  his  great 
scientific  and  biblical  knowledge  to  rescue  it  firom  its  seeming 
insignificance  in  creation,  by  likening  man  to  the  solitary 
sheep  astray  from  the  heavenly  fold,  by  magnifying  his  moral 
importance  in  comparison  with  the  telescopic  marvels  above 
him  as  well  as  in  contrast  with  the  microscopic  wonders 
beneath  him,  and  by  showing  why  the  higher  intelligences 
around  him  might  desire  to  look  into  the  mysteries  of  his 
salvation,  how  an  intense  sympathy  may  be  felt  for  him  in 
distant  parts  of  the  universe,  and  what  a  contest  for  ascend- 
ency over  him  is  being  waged  between  the  principalities  in 
heavenly  places  and  the  rulers  of  the  darkness  of  this  world. 
The  anonymous  author  of  the  treatise,  "The  Stars  and  the 
Angels,"  adopting  the  same  hypothesis,  has  maintained,  on 
the  ground  of  physical  and  moral  analogies,  that  the  sons  of 
God,  the  host  of  heaven,  are  of  the  same  nature  with  Adam 
and  Eve  in  paradise,  that  consistently  with  this  doctrine,  car- 
nivorous animals  may  exist  in  the  stars  as  they  existed  upon 
our  earth  before  the  fall  and  mortality  of  man,  and  that  so 
closely  connected  are  all  other  intelligent  races  with  ours  that 
there  is  not  an  inhabitant  of  the  most  distant  nebula  who  is 
not  mysteriously  interested  in  the  mediation  of  Christ.  Dr. 
Kurtz,  combining  the  speculations  of  Chalmers  and  Schubert, 
maintained  that  the  disorder  introduced  throughout  the 
heavenly  hierarchy  by  the  primitive  revolt  of  the  angels,  as 
well  as  that  consequent  upon  the  fall  of  man,  is  to  be  repaired 
through  the  vicarious  atonement  of  Christ  once  for  all  worlds 
and  for  all  ages,  that  in  Him  may  be  gathered  together  all 
things,  both  which  are  in  heaven  and  which  are  upon  earth  ; 
and  therefore  designates  our  solar  system  as  the  Judca  of  the 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  in  Astronomy.  331 

universe,  our  planet  as  the  Bethlehem  of  the  heavenly  land, 
and  redeemed  man  as  the  favored  child  of  Jehovah,  to  whom 
sun,  moon,  and  stars  make  obeisance  as  in  the  prophetic  dream 
of  Joseph. 

Daring  as  such  conjectures  may  seem,  it  was  but  a  logical 
step  farther  to  combine  the  new  scientific  cosmology  with  the 
biblical  Christology  or  doctrine  of  incarnation.  Early  in  the 
medieeval  schools  it  had  been  held  that  the  chasm  between 
the  infinite  and  the  finite,  the  Creator  and  the  creature,  could 
only  be  closed,  for  angels  as  for  men,  through  an  assumption 
of  their  respective  natures  by  the  Deity,  like  that  of  the  God- 
man  in  Christ;  and  since  astronomy  has  made  us  familiar 
with  other  inhabited  worlds,  and  geology  has  suggested  their 
physical  and  moral  analogy  to  our  planet,  it  has  been  con- 
sistently argued  that  a  divine  incarnation  may  be  as  requisite 
for  their  redemption  as  for  our  own.  Bishop  Butler  has  hinted 
it  as  a  thing  not  antecedently  improbable,  that  in  some  other 
globes  there  might  be  an  mverted  predominance  of  irrational 
and  vicious  creatures  over  the  rational  and  virtuous,  and  a 
probable  need  in  some  worlds  for  such  a  miracle  as  the 
Christian  revelation.  Orthodox  Hegelian  divines,  such  as 
Dorner  and  Christian  Weisse,  with  their  philosophical  view  of 
Christ  as  the  Divine  Logos  or  Universal  Reason  of  God,  could 
admit  the  idea  of  an  incarnation  of  Deity  upon  all  worlds  to 
be  alike  demanded  by  the  modern  astronomy  and  the  true 
Christology,  even  if  other  planetary  races  be  simply  viewed  as 
finite,  though  unfallen  creatures.  Sir  David  Brewster,  on  the 
assumption  that  such  races  are  fallen  and  salvable,  in  his 
treatise  styled  "More-  Worlds  than  One  the  Creed  of  the 
Philosopher  and  the  Hope  of  the  Christian,"  has  recourse  to 
the  bold  suggestion  of  a  repeated  immolation  as  well  as 
incarnation  of  Christ,  by  which  under  different  physical  forms 
to  expiate  the  guilt  of  unnumbered  worlds.  And  revolting  as 
such  a  thought  may  be  to  many  minds,  yet  it  has  been 
poetically  expressed  by  Philip  Bailey,  the  author  of  Festus,  in 
an  imaginary  colloquy  between  the  Son  of  God  and  the  Angel 
of  the  Earth: 

"  Think  not  that  I  have  lived  and  died  for  thine  alone. 
And  that  no  other  sphere  hath  hailed  me  Christ. 


332  Eclecticism  in  Astronomy.  [part  i. 

My  life  is  ever  suffering  for  love. 

In  judging  and  redeeming  worlds  is  spent 

Mine  everlasting  being." 

At  length,  to  complete  the  picture  of  eclecticism  in  this 
science,  we  may  now  behold  the  entire  Biblical  history  of  the 
heavens  already  recast  in  an  astronomical  form.  It  had  been 
the  dream  of  the  mediaeval  astrologers,  such  as  D'Abano  and 
Cardan,  to  link  the  fortunes  of  Christianity,  past,  present,  and 
future,  with  the  march  of  the  stars ;  and  even  after  the  Refor- 
mation it  was  urged,  in  proof  of  planetary  influence  over 
human  affairs,  that  in  the  Scriptures  the  stars  were  said  to 
have  fought  in  their  courses  against  Sisera,  and  that  the 
Israelites  in  Babylon  were  dismayed  at  the  signs  of  heaven. 
But  as  soon  as  the  folly  of  connecting  the  petty  concerns  of 
mortals  with  the  revolutions  of  innumerable  v/orlds  had  been 
demonstrated,  it  then  became  desirable  to  gather  astronomical 
evidence  of  such  scarcely  credible  miracles  as  the  Arrest  of 
the  Sun  at  Ajalon  and  Recession  of  the  shadow  on  the  Dial 
of  Ahaz,  the  Star  of  the  Nativity,  and  the  predicted  conflagra- 
tion of  the  heavens  in  the  last  day.  As  to  the  first  named 
miracles  there  have  long  been  orthodox  attempts  to  identify 
them  as  true  astronomical  events  rather  than  mere  optical 
appearances.  While  the  Ptolemaic  system  prevailed,  the 
fathers  and  schoolmen  taught  that  there  had  been  a  literal 
stoppage  of  the  sun  in  his  course  for  a  whole  day,  and  that 
the  Book  of  Jasher  is  simply  cited  as  corroborative  divine 
authority  for  the  miracle,  and  not  as  a  poetical  embellishment 
of  some  natural  occurrence.  It  was  likewise  held  that  the  sun 
went  back  through  ten  degrees  in  the  reign  of  Hezekiah,  with 
a  receding  shadow.  And  even  after  the  time  of  Galileo  and 
Copernicus,both  Protestant  and  Catholic  divines  adhered  to 
these  views.  Calvin,  in  his  Commentaries,  maintained  that  in 
answer  to  the  command  of  Joshua,  He  who  constantly  rolls 
the  immense  orb  of  day  with  indefatigable  swiftness  was 
pleased  that  it  should  halt  till  the  enemies  of  Israel  were  van- 
quished ;  and  also  that  when  Hezekiah  prayed  for  a  length- 
ened life,  the  sun  was  turned  back  with  its  shadow  through 
ten  degrees  of  the  dial  as  a  sign  to  the  king,  that  He  who 
made  the  day  could  prolong  his  life.     Archbishop  Usher,  in 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  in  Astrojwmy.  333 

his  "Annals  of  the  World,"  argued  that  by  the  prodigious 
and  miraculous  retrogradation  of  the  sun  in  the  times  of 
Joshua  and  Hezekiah,  as  much  was  substituted  for  the  night 
as  was  added  to  the  day,  and  in  proof  that  the  civil  calendar 
was  unharmed,  referred  to  the  eclipses  recorded  by  Ptolemy 
and  the  Chaldeans.  Bishop  Patrick,  commenting  upon  the 
Book  of  Joshua,  found  plain  evidence  in  the  Euterpe  of  Hero- 
dotus that  the  Egyptians  had  known  of  a  stupendous  altera- 
tion in  the  course  of  the  sun,  and  even  sought  for  mythical 
traditions  of  the  event  in  the  story  of  Apollo,  stopping  the 
wheels  of  his  chariot  and  prolonging  the  day,  in  order  to 
listen  to  a  chorus  of  nymphs,  or  in  the  annals  of  the  Theban 
war,  when  the  sun  stood  still  and  blushed  at  the  unnatural 
murder  of  Atreus.  The  learned  Buddeus  held  the  same 
opinion,  and  Cardinal  Cullen  has  not  yet  relinquished  it ;  but 
a  number  of  divines  now  seek  to  modify  it,  by  maintaining, 
more  in  consistency  with  the  Copernican  system,  that  it  was 
the  rolling  earth  which  stood  still  and  not  the  sun,  the  optical 
phenomena  being  the  same  in  either  case.  Mr.  Greswell,  in 
his  work  on  Catholic  Chronology,  has  calculated  that  in  the 
reign  of  Hezekiah,  May  31,  b.  c.  710,  suddenly  and  miracu- 
lously, the  earth's  axial  motion  was  reversed  from  East  to 
West,  and  that  confirmation  of  the  event  may  be  found  in  the 
solar  eclipse  recorded  in  the  Chinese  book  of  the  Shu-king. 
And  some  intelligent  Protestant  divines,  while  admitting  the 
tremendous  disturbance  and  chaos  which  such  an  arrest  of  our 
planet  would  produce  all  over  the  globe,  if  not  throughout  the 
solar  system,  have  still  insisted  that  these  disastrous  conse- 
quences might  have  been  miraculously  prevented,  and  that  it 
would  have  been  a  worthy  feat  of  Omnipotence  thus  to  de- 
liver the  army  of  Joshua  and  confirm  the  faith  of  Hezekiah. 

The  Star  of  the  Wise  Men  has  in  like  manner  been  a  fruit- 
ful theme  of  astronomical  speculation.  The  fathers,  such  as 
Eusebius,  Augustine,  and  Jerome  seem  to  have  simply  re- 
garded it  as  a  new  creation  in  the  heavens  or  in  the  atmos- 
phere, and  dwelt  upon  its  surpassing  lu.stre  and  purity  as  a 
symbol  of  the  star  of  Jacob,  the  bright  and  morning  star,  and 
the  image  of  the  Father's  glory.  The  scholastic  astrologers 
placed  it  among  the  constellations  and  even  sought  to  cast 


334  Eclecticism  in  Astronomy.  [part  i. 

the  horoscope  of  Christ.  But  with  the  dedine  of  astrology 
the  Reformers  sought  to  restore  it  as  a  purely  miraculous  ob- 
ject, lying  beyond  the  science  of  the  Magi  as  well  as  of  modern 
astronomers.  Calvin,  for  example,  described  it  as  a  meteor  or 
comet  which,  unlike  any  natural  star,  appeared  and  disappeared 
and  by  a  devious  course  pointed  the  way  to  Bethlehem. 
And,  in  recent  times,  some  attempts  have  been  made  to  iden- 
tify it  as  a  strictly  astronomical  miracle.  Horsley,  and  more 
recently  Hengstenberg,  so  far  from  regarding  the  luminary 
as  a  mere  astrological  sign,  have  ingeniously  argued  that  it 
was  the  star  of  Jacob  or  the  miraculous  fulfillment  of  a  pro- 
phecy of  Balaam  which  had  become  traditional  in  the  heathen 
world  and  which  the  Magi,  in  common  with  other  devout 
Gentiles,  were  then  investigating.  Dean  Trench,  in  his  little 
treatise  on  the  "Star  of  the  Wise  Men,"  also  supposed  them  to 
be  guided  by  secret  illumination  rather  than  any  occult  art, 
and  conceived  the  prodigy  itself  to  have  been  literally  a  new 
star,  larger,  lovelier,  and  brighter  than  any  other  in  the  host  of 
heaven,  yet  probably  resembling  such  variable  stars  as  Kepler 
and  Herschel  have  sometimes  discerned  as  appearing  and 
disappearing  with  unwonted  brilliancy.  Wieseler,  a  German 
writer  on  the  Chronology  of  the  Four  Evangelists,  has  argued 
that  while  the  luminary  itself  was  produced  by  a  natural  con- 
junction of  the  planets,  massed  together  as  an  apparent  star, 
yet  the  real  guiding  star  of  the  Magi  was  a  comet  which,  ac- 
cording to  some  Chinese  astronomical  tables,  was  visible  for 
about  seventy  days  at  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era. 
Many  orthodox  divines,  however,  with  Albert  Barnes,  still 
regard  this  star  as  a  meteor  or  aurora  which  appeared  by 
divine  command  in  the  skies  of  Persia  and  Judea;  while 
others,  conceding  to  sidereal  astronomy  all  that  it  now  claims, 
can  find  nothing  incredible  in  the  creation  of  a  new-born 
world  in  the  heavens  as  the  presage  of  a  new-born  God  upon 
earth. 

But  of  all  the  themes  of  biblical  astronomy  none  has  so 
enkindled  the  fancy  of  eclectic  scientists  and  divines  as  the 
predicted  destruction  and  renovation  of  the  heavens  by  fire  in 
the  day  of  judgment.  So  long  as  the  astronomical  heavens 
embraced    only  the  visible  firmament    and    atmosphere,  and 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  ijt  Astronomy.  335 

were  thought  to  be  composed  of  crystalhne  spheres  revolv- 
ing with  the  planets  attached,  it  was  easy  to  imagine  such  a 
fabric  dissolving  in  flames,  with  the  sun  and  moon  as  red  as 
blood,  the  stars  falling  to  the  earth,  the  elements  melting  with 
fervent  heat,  the  heavens  passing  away  with  a  great  noise, 
and  the  new  heavens  emerging  in  their  place  as  the  purified 
abode  of  saints  and  angels.  And  consistently  with  such 
views  the  sacred  poets  and  artists  of  both  Catholicism  and 
Protestantism  have  depicted  the  coming  of  the  Son  of  Man  in 
the  clouds  of  heaven,  the  saints  rising  to  meet  Him  in  the  air, 
the  judgment  of  men  and  angels,  the  triumph  of  the  heavenly 
host,  as  the  successive  scenes  of  a  celestial  drama  yet  to  open 
within  our  visible  sky,  at  the  foretold  signal  of  the  last  great 
day, 

"  When  shriveling  like  a  parched  scroll 
The  flaming  heavens  together  roll, 
And  louder  yet.  and  yet  more  dread 
Swells  the  high  trump  which  wakes  the  dead." 

But  in  the  progress  of  celestial  physics  came  the  need  for 
some  re-adjustment  of  these  tremendous  miracles.  At  first 
such  prodigies  as  comets  and  meteors,  in  the  existing  imper- 
fect state  of  knowledge,  were  supposed  to  be  direct  instru- 
ments as  well  as  portents  of  the  coming  judgment.  Whiston, 
with  his  unbridled  fancy,  imagined  that  a  great  com-et  to 
which  he  attributed  the  Deluge  was  a  kind  of  travelling 
purgatory,  hurrying  its  wretched  inmates  between  the  ex- 
tremes of  heat  and  cold,  from  the  sun  to  the  borders  of  the 
solar  system,  and  predicted  the  exact  date  of  its  return  as  a 
visitation  of  the  terrible  judgment  of  God,  to  destroy  the  world 
by  fire  as  before  by  water.  Halley,  in  like  manner,  lent  his 
graver  authority  to  the  popular  fears  excited  by  the  dreadful 
comet  of  1680,  which  two  centuries  before  had  spread  such 
consternation  over  Europe  that  the  Pope  had  issued  a  bull  for 
special  prayers  to  avert  its  approach.  Newton  also  conjectured 
the  burning  stars  of  his  day  to  have  been  ignited  by  comets, 
which  might  yet  combine  with  other  accumulating  disturb- 
ances in  the  solar  system  to  enkindle  the  great  catastrophe 
foretold  in  Scripture.  And  the  scene  of  the  conflagration 
itself  was  made  co-extensive  with  the  realms  of  astronomy. 


336  Eclecticism  in  Astronomy.  [part  i. 

The  English  Millennarians,such  as  Mede  and  Whitby,  under- 
stood the  elements  which  shall  melt  with  fervent  heat  to  be 
the  planets  and  constellations,  and  cited  the  fathers  to  prove 
that  the  heavenly  bodies  shall  as  truly  be  dissolved  as  the 
solid  earth.  Chalmers,  with  his  glowing  imagination,  de- 
scribed the  new  heavens  and  earth  emerging  from  a  fiery 
chaos,  and  space  again  lighted  up  with  a  firmament  of  mate- 
rial splendor;  and,  so  far  from  treating  the  conflagration  as 
either  local  or  metaphorical,  he  declared,  in  his  discourse  on 
the  "  Transitoriness  of  Visible  Things,"  that  those  solid  and 
enormous  masses  which,  like  the  firm  world  we  tread  upon, 
roll  in  mighty  circuits  through  the  immensity  around  us, 
shall  flee  away  from  the  face  of  Him  that  sitteth  upon  the 
throne  and  no  place  be  found  for  them.  Kurtz,  connecting  as 
he  does  the  progress  of  all  other  worlds  with  the  moral  for- 
tunes of  our  planet,  has  maintained  that  in  consequence  of  the 
great  angelic  apostacy  the  heavens  are  not  clean  in  the  sight 
of  Jehovah,  but  with  all  their  hosts  of  stars  shall  yet  be  reno- 
vated and  transfigured  by  the  purifying  fires  of  the  final 
judgment,  when  Christ  with  the  holy  angels  shall  descend  to 
the  earth  and  forever  separate  the  good  from  the  evil  elements 
throughout  creation.  Not  even  the  remotest  stellar  worlds 
are  beyond  the  reach  of  such  lofty  speculations.  Helmholtz 
himself  has  suggested  that  the  final  relapse  of  planets,  suns, 
and  galaxies  into  igneous  vapor  might  answer  to  the  popular 
description  of  the  day  of  judgment.  Professor  Stephen  Alex- 
ander, in  accordance  with  his  theory  of  the  disrupted  and 
spiral  clusters  and  nebulae,  finds  in  their  very  appearance  a 
visible  expression  of  that  creative  energy  which  destroys  and 
renews  the  heavens  as  but  the  vesture  of  the  Almighty,  that 
waxes  old  and  is  changed  like  a  garment  Doctors  Tait  and 
Balfour,  in  their  essay  on  the  "  Unseen  Universe,"  have  main- 
tained that  the  predictions  of  the  sacred  writers  are  verified  by 
the  modern  doctrine  of  an  ultimate  dissipation  of  energy,  by 
which  all  existing  worlds  are  destined  to  collapse  and  vanish 
like  smoke  into  the  invisible  ether  whence  they  sprang. '  Mr. 
Ethan  S.  Chapin,  in  his  treatise  on  "  Gravitation  in  Nature," 
has  argued,  that  already  that  force  has  at  times  been  miracu- 
lously suspended,  and  were  it  entirely  withdrawn,  many  pro- 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  in  Geology.  -i^^j 

phecies  of  Holy  Writ  would  be  fulfilled,  the  earth"  would  burst 
and  melt  with  fervent  heat,  the  moon  likewise  become  as 
blood,  the  sun  be  darkened  through  expansion,  the  stars  fall 
like  meteors,  and  the  heavens  depart  as  a  scroll  when  it  is 
rolled  together.  And,  difficult  as  it  would  be  even  to  conceive 
of  such  a  stupendous  miracle  throughout  celestial  space  and 
time,  yet  eloquent  preachers  would  sometimes  seem  to 
imagine  that  a  literal  extinction  of  the  sun  and  moon,  falling 
of  the  stars  from  their  orbits,  rolling  together  of  suns  and 
planets  in  flames,  and  passing  away  of  the  whole  sidereal 
heavens,  with  all  their  systems  of  worlds,  would  be  a  fit 
closing  act  in  the  divine  drama  of  our  little  orb. 

Eclecticism  in  Geology. 

The  scientific  geology,  in  like  manner,  has  been  ravaged 
for  the  spoils  of  a  religious  eclecticism.  Each  successive 
phase  of  terrestrial  physics  has  been  at  once  claimed  as  a 
manifestation  of  the  Divine  wisdom  and  goodness,  and  authen- 
ticated in  the  very  words  of  Scripture.  For  centuries,  as  we 
have  seen,  according  to  the  orthodox  geography,  the  known 
earth  was  delineated  as  an  oblong  island  established  upon  the 
floods;  with  the  city  of  Jerusalem  at  the  centre  and  four 
great  rivers  running  to  the  ends  of  the  earth  into  the  sea  and 
returning  in  clouds  whence  they  came;  with  a  crystal  roof  in 
which  angels  opened  and  shut  the  windows  of  heaven  in  order 
to  produce  the  vicissitudes  of  the  weather;  and  with  a  sub- 
terraneous cavern  from  which  at  any  time  the  purgatorial 
flames  might  burst  forth  in  judgment.  But  when  the  true 
physical  geography  became  known,  de\  out  naturalists  such  as 
Nieuwentyt,  Derham,  and  Ray  began  to  collect  more  scientific 
evidences  of  the  divine  wisdom  in  the  structure  and  furniture 
of  man's  earthly  habitation,  anticipating  much  of  Paley's  argu- 
ment, even  to  the  illustration  of  the  watch.  M.  Bartholmess, 
in  his  Critical  History  of  Religious  Doctrines,  has  enumerated 
many  French  writers  of  the  last  century  such  as  Reaumur, 
Bonnet,  Trembley,  Lyonnet,  together  with  the  German  au- 
thors, Wolf,  Fabricius,  Lesser,  Lambert,  Rothe,  Schultze, 
Geltke,  who  gathered  theistic  proofs  and  illustrations  from 
every  element  and  object  in  nature,  water  and  fire,  minerals, 


33^  Eclecticism  in  Geology.  [part  i. 

shells  and  insects  and  even  storms  and  tempests,  in  treatises 
with  the  pedantic  titles  of  Hydro-theology,  Pyro-theology, 
Litho-theology,  Testaceo-theology,  Insecto-theology,  and 
Bronte-theology.  And  somewhat  of  the  same  conceit  is  still 
favored  by  natural  theologians  who  would  make  the  human 
intellect  the  sole  final  cause  of  the  microscopic  crystals  in  the 
sand  and  the  snow,  and  find  special  divine  intentions  in  phy- 
sical effects  which  are  plainly  the  result  of  accident  or  artifice. 
As  the  geological  sciences  have  advanced,  the  true  theistic 
argument  has  become  cumulative  and  bewildering  in  its  mag- 
nificent richness.  Evidences  have  been  collected  not  merely 
of  benevolent  design,  but  of  supreme  intelligence  in  the 
mathematical  order,  the  geometrical  symmetry,  the  optical 
beauty,  as  well  as  the  wonderful  utility  which  pervade  the 
whole  terrestrial  system.  Dr.  John  Kidd,  in  his  Bridgewater 
Treatise  on  "  The  Adaptation  of  External  Nature  to  the 
Physical  Condition  of  Man,"  with  reference  to  the  supply  of 
his  wants,  starting  with  a  view  of  his  comparative  helpless- 
ness, has  ranged  through  the  atmospheric,  the  mineral,  the 
vegetable,  the  animal  kingdoms,  co-ordinating  an  immense 
series  of  facts  in  proof  of  the  wisdom  and  goodness  of  the 
Creator.  Dean  Buckland,  in  his  Bridgewater  Treatise  on 
"  Geology  and  Mineralogy  with  reference  to  Natural  Theo- 
logy," beginning  far  back  in  time  with  the  molten  earth,  has 
traced  its  forming  layers  of  rock,  metal,  and  coal  as  designed 
for  future  use,  together  with  the  monster  floras  and  faunas 
adapted  to  its  changing  climates,  ere  it  was  fitted  to  become 
the  abode  of  man.  The  same  argument  has  been  unfolded 
with  scientific  candor  and  learning,  as  well  as  devout  enthu- 
siasm, by  President  Hitchcock  in  his  "  Religion  of  Geology 
and  its  Connected  Sciences."  Professor  George  Fowne,  in 
his  Actonian  Prize  Essay,  has  exemplified  the  wisdom  and 
goodness  of  God  in  the  chemical  history  of  the  earth  and  its 
atmosphere,  and  in  the  marvellous  adaptation  of  its  inorganic 
substances  to  the  organized  beings  which  tenant  its  surface. 
On  the  same  foundation,  a  like  illustration  has  lately  been 
drawn  by  the  Rev.  George  Warrington  from  the  phenomena 
of  radiation.  Professor  J.  P.  Cooke,  in  his  Graham  Lectures 
on  "  Religion  and  Chemistry,"  has  gathered  fresh  testimony 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  in  Geology.  339 

from  the  beneficent  uses  of  oxygen,  carbonic  acid,  nitrogen, 
and  all  the  constituents  of  air,  earth  and  water.  Professor 
Guyot,  in  his  Lowell  Lectures  on  "  Earth  and  Man,"  has 
sketched  the  wonderful  pre-adjustment  of  the  whole  physical 
structure  and  furniture  of  the  finished  globe  to  the  races  and 
civilizations  which  have  been  cradled  in  its  genial  continents, 
nourished  by  its  cloudy  mountains,  fanned  with  its  balmy 
winds,  and  wafted,  with  growing  wealth  and  power,  across  its 
mighty  seas. 

The  invisible  beauties  of  nature,  as  well  as  its  more  obvious 
utilities,  have  also  been  unveiled  by  the  hand  of  a  devout 
science.  The  distinguished  mathematician,  Charles  Babbage, 
in  his  "  Ninth  Bridgewater  Treatise,"  sought  to  illustrate 
arithmetically,  by  means  of  a  calculating  machine,  after  the 
manner  of  Paley,  that  divine  forethought  and  design  which 
pervade  the  evolution  of  the  whole  terrestrial  mechanism, 
under  both  law  and  miracle,  and  unfolded  a  secret  Book  of 
Remembrance  in  those  ethereal  waves  of  light  and  sound, 
which  perpetuate  the  impression  of  every  word  and  deed  of 
man.  President  Hill  of  Harvard  has  in  hke  manner  united 
Geometry  and  Faith,  by  exposing  those  vast,  intricate  prob- 
lems of  form  and  motion,  with  which  an  Infinite  Intelligence 
is  ever  tasking  the  devout  student  of  nature.  President 
McCosh,  with  the  aid  of  Professor  Dickie,  in  his  "  Typical 
Forms  and  Special  Ends,"  whilst  not  undervaluing  the  utili- 
tarian arguments  of  other  writers,  has  chiefly  aimed  to  blend 
the  evidence  of  order  and  beauty  with  that  of  adaptation 
and  use,  as  found  in  the  subtle  harmonies  of  number,  form 
and  color  which  lurk  jn  the  crystal,  the  plant,  the  animal, 
gleam  in  the  most  hidden  atoms  and  particles,  and  thus 
transfigure  the  whole  earth  with  a  divine  intelligence  and 
glory.  Principal  Dawson,  in  his  Archaia,  has  sought  to 
deduce  an  exact  cosmogony  and  natural  history  from  the 
very  text  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  as  interpreted  by  the 
physical  sciences.  And  numerous  poets,  essayists  and  popu- 
lar writers,  persuaded  of  the  close  correspondence  between 
the  word  and  the  works  of  God,  have  been  seeking  to  trans- 
late the  whole  course  of  nature  into  a  parable  of  grace,  by 
infusing  into  material  phenomena  an  evangelical  significance. 


340  Eclecticism  in  Geology.  [part  i. 

A  "Sacred  Philosophy  of  the  Seasons"  has  thus  been  framed 
out  of  the  scientific  and  scriptural  meditations  of  various 
authors  by  Dr.  Henry  Duncan,  and  arranged  in  the  order  of 
the  natural  and  civil  year.  Dr.  Hitchcock,  in  his  Rehgious 
Lectures  upon  the  Four  Seasons,  has  discoursed  with  philo- 
sophic faith  upon  the  resurrections  of  Spring,  the  triumphal 
arch  of  Summer,  the  euthanasia  of  Autumn,  and  the  corona- 
tion of  Winter.  An  English  layman,  Dr.  Chaplin  Child,  has 
skilfully  wrought  the  latest  results  of  physical  research  into  a 
scientific  commentary  upon  the  winds,  waters,  fields,  moun- 
tains, floods  and  storms,  which  are  called  to  blend  their  varied 
voices  in  the  "  Benedicite  "  as  daily  chanted  in  the  liturgy  of  the 
Church.  It  would  seem  as  if  the  whole  creation,  animate  and 
inanimate,  as  thus  retraced  and  interpreted  by  the  devout 
geologist,  were  at  length  bursting  forth  into  a  grand  orchestral 
hymn  of  praise  to  the  Creator,  such  as  Diyden  fancied  in  the 
very  process  of  evolving  the  cosmos  out  of  the  ancient  chaos : 

"  From  harmony,  from  heavenly  harmony 
This  universal  frame  began  : 
From  harmony  to  harmony 
Through  all  the  compass  of  the  notes  it  ran, 
The  diapason  closing  full  in  Man." 

But  it  is  in  connecting  Geology  with  Genesis  that  the  feats 
of  religious  eclectics  have  been  most  daring  and  fanciful.  In 
the  time  of  Woodward,  Hook  and  Ray,  as  we  have  seen,  the 
whole  science  was  largely  drawn  from  the  Old  Testament 
Scriptures,  and  after  the  rise  of  the  two  rival  schools  of 
Werner  and  Hutton,  their  disciples  continued  to  make 
Moses  speak  by  turns  as  a  Neptunist  or  a  Vulcanist.  It  is 
still  fancied  that  Job  was  of  the  latter  school,  because  he 
speaks  of  fire  turned  up  from  under  the  earth,  and  that  St. 
Peter  describes  the  earth  standing  out  of  the  water  and  in  the 
water  as  a  uniformitarian  might  tell  us  of  the  secular  subsi- 
dence of  the  seas  and  gradual  upheaval  of  the  Alps  and  Andes. 
But  since  it  became  probable  by  the  speculations  of  La  Place 
and  Humboldt  that  the  earth  has  passed  through  long  and 
stormy  epochs  from  its  primitive  chao.s  to  its  present  cosmos, 
there  has  been  a  remarkable  attempt  to  explain  the  creative 
process  by  some  form  of  Satanic  agency.     The  ancient  Jewish 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  in  Geology.  341 

and  Christian  tradition,  that  chaos  was  produced  by  the  fall  of 
the  angels,  has  been  blended  with  modern  cosmogonic  theories. 
Schubert  with  daring  fancy  has  maintained  that  our  earth, 
together  with  the  other  planets  and  the  sun,  originally  be- 
longed to  a  brilliant  astral  system  or  starry  nebula,  within 
whose  photosphere  dwelt  the  principalities  and  powers  by 
whom  it  was  dragged  down  into  darkness  and  ruin  and 
thus  made  the  scene  of  the  new  creation  recorded  in  Genesis 
and  verified  by  geology.  De  Rougemont,  in  his  "  History  of 
the  Earth  according  to  the  Bible  and  Geology,"  described  the 
auroral  earth  as  one  of  the  morning-stars  of  Job,  which  was 
probably  the  abode  of  Lucifer  and  his  legions,  but  through 
their  revolt  was  converted  into  that  dark,  abysmal  chaos  of 
Moses,  which  became  the  cradle  of  the  whole  solar  system 
as  since  developed  in  accordance  with  the  nebular  theory  of 
La  Place.  Kurtz,  maintaining  that  other  worlds  are  still 
pure  and  unfallcn,  and  consequently  restricting  the  angelic 
revolt  to  our  own  planet,  regards  the  chaotic  earth  as 
the  residence  of  a  previous  creation,  a  devastated  orb, 
which  was  restored  to  order  and  beauty  through  the  six 
creative  days,  in  spite  of  demoniac  opposition.  Dr.  Anton 
Westermeyer,  of  Munich,  in  his  "Old  Testament  Vindicated 
from  Modern  Infidel  Objections,"  declares  that  the  organisms 
which  lie  petrified  in  our  mountains  have  only  existed  upon 
our  earth  since  it  was  the  dwelling-place  of  fallen  angels,  and 
are  but  the  caricatures  and  inventions  of  Satan  as  he  strove  to 
hinder  and  miscarry  the  new  creation.  Delitzsch,  starting 
with  a  dualistic  conception  of  the  world,  describes  chaos  as  a 
sort  of  non-divine  matter,  made  antagonistic  through  diabolic 
agency,  and  the  process  of  creation  as  a  gradual  triumph  over 
Satan,  renewed  by  Christ  in  the  work  of  redemption,  and  yet 
to  be  completed  in  the  final  renovation.  And  mystical  divines 
in  all  ages  have  viewed  the  whole  material  creation  as  a 
degradation  of  the  spiritual  creation,  attending  the  primal  fall 
of  the  angels. 

The  same  eclectic  spirit  has  also  been  seeking  with  intrepid 
faith  to  make  the  long  geological  eras  coincident  with  the  six 
creative  days.  During  the  early  and  middle  ages,  and  until 
the  present  century,  there  could  have  been  no  question  as  to 


342  Eclecticism  in  Geology.  [part  i. 

the  creation  of  land,  sea  and  sky,  fishes,  birds  and  beasts  in 
six  days  of  twenty-four  hours,  especially  since  it  was  held 
that  the  very  design  of  the  creative  fiats  was  didactic;  but 
with  the  accumulating  evidence  of  the  globular  form  of  the 
earth,  its  gaseous  origin  and  igneous  nucleus,  its  successive 
strata,  and  extinct  floras  and  faunas,  the  breach  between  Geo- 
logy and  Genesis  seemed  ever  widening,  and  scheme  after 
/O  scheme  has  been  devised  for  their  reconciliation,  ^^he  first  of 
these  schemes  would  simply  have  retained  the  geological  eras 
within  days  of  twenty-four  hours.  Its  advocates,  still  cling- 
ing to  the  traditional  views  of  Woodward  and  Burnet,  sought 
to  leave  the  miraculous  acts  of  creation  intact  and  referred 
the  results  of  palaeontology  to  some  subsequent  cause  or 
process  within  the  present  historic  epoch.  Mr.  Granville 
Penn,  an  heir  of  the  American  statesman,  in  his  "Compara- 
tive Estimate  of  the  Mosaical  and  Mineral  Geologies," 
maintained  that  as  all  plants  and  animals  were  created  six 
thousand  years  ago,  the  fossil  floras  and  faunas  are  but  relics 
of  Noah's  flood.  Fairholme,  in  his  "  Geology  of  Scripture," 
Young,  in  his  "Scriptural  Geology,"  and  even  the  Bridge- 
water  essayist,  Kirby,  with  all  their  great  physical  attainments^ 
held  to  this  sort  of  diluvian  dissolution  and  stratification  of 
rocks,  plants  and  animals  as  the  only  hypothesis  consistent 
with  the  inspired  record.  Mr.  P.  McFarlane,  with  still  more 
remarkable  ingenuity,  argued  that  the  fossil  floras  and  faunas 
were  but  ruins  of  Adam's  fall,  and  in  his  "Exposure  of 
Modern  Geology"  showed  how  the  paradisaic  globe  might 
have  shrunken  in  consequence  of  the  apostacy,  so  as  to  form 
vast  steppes  or  terrace- like  series  of  vegetable  and  animal 
orders,  which  were  afterwards  successively  submerged  and 
petrified  by  the  deluge.  And  Dr.  Emmanuel  Veith,  in  his 
"Origin  of  the  Human  World,"  has  not  only  included  all 
palaeontology  between  Adam's  fall  and  Noah's  flood,  but  de- 
clares that  the  coal  measures  and  turf-beds,  volcanic  rocks 
and  lava  streams  are  the  mere  ruins  of  paradise,  no  more 
denoting  the  proper  works  of  creation  than  the  mossy  walls 
of  Ninevah  or  the  cinders  of  a  burnt  village. 

The  second  conciliatory  scheme  would  have  inserted  the 
geological  eras  between  the  six  days  and  some  primitive  ere- 


CHAP,  u'.]  Eclccticisjn  in  Geology.  343 

ation.  Its  adherents,  while  granting  the  evidence  of  strata, 
floras  and  faunas  succeeding  one  another  through  unmeasured 
time,  have  endeavored  to  find  space  enough  for  their  develop- 
ment in  an  interval  before  the  present  earth  was  formed.  Dr. 
Chalmers,  in  his  Review  of  Cuvicr,  suggested  that  long  after 
the  original  act  of  creation  recorded  in  the  first  verse  of  Gen- 
esis, there  may  have  occurred  the  chaos  and  six  days'  works 
recorded  in  the  following  verses,  and  that  during  that  inter- 
vening period  may  have  flourished  and  decayed  all  the  suc- 
cessive dynasties  of  organic  life  which  geologists  now  find 
buried  in  the  crust  of  the  globe,  but  which  would  have  formed 
an  irrelevant  parenthesis  in  the  sacred  history.  Dr.  Pye  Smith 
in  his  able  treatise  on  "  Geology  and  ScrijDture  "  modified  this 
theory  of  an  omitted  chapter  in  Genesis,  by  supposing  that  the 
chaos  and  six  days'  work  were  not  only  recent  but  local  and 
supernatural,  designed  to  furnish  a  paradise  for  Adam  in  Asia, 
whilst  the  rest  of  the  globe  was  proceedmg  as  for  ages  before 
under  natural  geological  laws.  Professor  Andrew  Wagner, 
the  great  palaeontologist,  in  his  elaborate  "  History  of  the 
Primitive  World,"  maintained  that  the  first  verse  of  Genesis  is 
a  brief  summary  of  the  creative  works  in  doctrinal  opposition 
to  heathenism  and  materialism,  that  the  second  verse  affords 
a  glimpse  of  a  primitive  chaos,  and  that  from  the  third  verse 
proceed  the  six  days'  works  as  new  and  special  creations.  Dr. 
Gerald  Molloy,  of  Maynooth,  in  his  recent  treatise  on  "  Geol- 
ogy and  Revelation,"  has  carefully  collected  the  opinions  of 
fathers,  schoolmen  and  doctors,  in  favor  of  the  interpretation 
that  a  vast  interval  of  time  may  have  elapsed  between  the  cre- 
ation of  the  world  and  the  creation  of  man ;  long  enough 
indeed  to  embrace  all  the  myriad  ages  which  geologists  can 
claim.  And  in  this  general  view  have  concurred  various 
writers,  such  as  Buckland,  Sedgwick  and  Wiseman,  Reinsch, 
Keerl  and  Shubert,  Warrington,  Paul  and  Jacobus,  who  have 
yet  differed  as  to  the  nature  and  length  of  the  six  formative 
days  which  came  after  the  chaos  and  original  creation. 

The  third  conciliatory  scheme  would  expand  the  six  days 
into  creative  epochs  coinciding  with  the  geological  eras.  When 
it  was  found  that  such  long  dynasties  of  plants,  fishes  and  ani- 
mals as  are  entombed  in  the  strata  could  not  possibly  have 


344  Eclecticism  in  Geology.  [part  i. 

been  created  and  fossilized  in  periods  of  twenty-four  hours,  it 
only  remained  to  review  the  existing  interpretation  of  the  word 
"  day,"  and  in  analogy  with  other  scriptures  regard  it  as  an  in- 
definite epoch,  such  as  the  day  of  salvation,  or  the  day  of 
judgment,  or  the  day  of  the  Lord;  in  short,  as  a  vast  creative 
era  in  the  eternal  life  of  that  Jehovah  with  whom  one  day  is  as 
a  thousand  years,  and  a  thousand  years  but  as  one  day.  Dr. 
Hettinger  has  maintained  with  Faber,  that  this  principle  of 
interpretation,  so  far  from  having  been  forced  upon  theology 
by  modern  science,  is  as  old  as  St.  Augustine,  and  would  not 
have  been  new  to  Bossuet,  who  termed  the  Mosaic  days  six 
distinct  developments.  Eminent  Protestant  divines,  also,  such 
as  Pusey,  Hengstenberg  and  Tayler  Lewis,  have  held  the  same 
opinion  on  exegetical  grounds,  and  leading  geologists,  such  as 
De  Luc,  Cuvier  and  De  Serres,  very  early  favored  the  attempt 
to  show  a  correspondence  between  the  biblical  and  scientific 
epochs  of  creation.  The  late  Hugh  Miller,  in  his  "  Testimony 
of  the  Rocks,"  comparing  the  fossil  series  of  Cuvier  with  the 
successive  creations  of  Moses,  endeavored  to  identify  the 
fourth,  fifth  and  sixth  days  with  the  ancient,  middle  and  mo- 
dern periods  of  geology,  termed  the  palaeozoic,  mesozoic,  and 
kainozoic  ages,  thus  affording  a  scientific  interpretation  of  the 
second  half  of  the  hexaemeron.  Professor  Guyot,  in  his  Lec- 
tures as  reported  in  the  Bibliotheca  Sacra,  adding  the  astro- 
nomical speculations  of  La  Place  and  Alexander  to  his  own 
geological  researches,  has  at  length  completed  a  magnificent 
delineiiiion  of  the  whole  history  of  creation,  through  all  its 
cosmogonic  eras,  in  which  is  exhibited  successively  during 
the  first  three  days  the  formation  of  the  heavens  with  their 
nebulae,  suns  and  planets,  and  during  the  second  three  days 
the  formation  of  the  earth  with  its  climates,  floras  and  faunas ; 
the  former  including  the  azoic  ages  or  inorganic  era  of  matter, 
and  the  latter,  the  palaeozoic,  mesozoic,  and  kainozoic  ages  or 
organic  era  of  life.  But  while  many  leading  geologists  and 
divines  have  thus  been  agreed  in  looking  for  a  general  corres- 
pondence between  the  two  records  of  geology  and  Genesis 
there  has  been  the  greatest  diversity  as  to  the  salient  points 
in  the  parallelism.  Professor  Zockler,  in  his  "  Primitive  His- 
tory of  the  Earth,"  assigned  the  pakeozoic  age  of  transitional 


CHAP.  iv.J  Eclecticism  in  Geology.  345 

and  carboniferous  strata  to  the  third  day,  when  the  land  was 
divided  from  the  water,  and  the  first  plants  and  trees  were 
created.  Ebrard  also  agrees  with  him  in  postponing  the  me- 
sozoic  and  kainozoic  ages  to  the  fifth  and  sixth  days,  during 
which  were  created  the  fishes  of  the  sea,  the  birds  of  the  air, 
and  the  beasts  of  the  field.  Andrew  Wagner,  Schubert  and 
Guyot,  in  order  to  explain  the  creation  of  light  on  the  first  day, 
and  of  plants  on  the  third  day,  have  supposed  that  as  yet  the 
earth  was  a  nebulous  star  or  self-luminous  planet,  with  a  pho- 
tosphere, of  which  the  auroral  halo  is  a  remnant,  and  that  then, 
under  the  influence  of  such  heat  and  light,  a  crude  vegetation 
might  have  appeared  long  before  the  sun,  moon  and  stars 
could  become  visible,  or  the  climates  and  seasons  be  ordained 
on  the  fourth  day  as  a  preparation  for  the  great  organic  epochs 
which  were  to  follow  in  the  fifth  and  sixth  days.  Father'  Ber- 
nuzzi,  of  Parma,  in  his  "  Divine  Revelation  and  Geology,"  has. 
referred  the  Laurentian  age  of  fossil  plants  to  the  third  day, 
the  Cambrian  or  Silurian  age  of  mollusks  and  shells  to  the 
fourth  day,  and  the  Devonian  and  Jurassic  ages  of  fishes,  birds 
and  mammals,  to  the  fifth  and  sixth  days,  and  has  suggested 
that  the  inspired  writer  may  have  omitted  to  mention  the  ma- 
rine animals  of  the  fourth  day  as  not  likely  to  be  observed  and 
unimportant  to  the  narrative.  Father  Pianciani,  in  his  "  Na- 
tural Cosmogony  compared  with  Genesis,"  has  maintained 
that  microscopic  corals  and  plant-like  animals  may  have  been 
created  even  on  the  third  day,  and  not  noticed  in  the  history 
in  accordance  with  the  hermeneutical  principle  of  St.  Thomas 
Aquinas,  that  Moses  only  brings  forward  what  is  visible  to  the 
eye,  and  distinguishable  from  the  earth  by  apparent  life  and 
motion.  Hugh  Miller  had  already  suggested  a  similar  view 
by  his  theory  of  an  inspired  vision  which  should  only  exhibit 
the  leading  features  and  characteristic  forms  in  each  successive 
scene  of  the  creation.  But  Principal  Dawson,  as  if  to  under- 
mine all  these  elaborate  superstructures,  has  discovered  in  the 
lowest  or  Laurentian  stratum  a  new  fossil  animal  termed  the 
"  Eozoon  Canadense,"  and  hence  been  led  to  confine  the  whole 
pala^ontological  record  within  the  last  two  days  of  the  cre- 
ative week. 

The   fourth    conciliatory   scheme,  and  the  climax  of  the 

2T 


34^  Eclecticism  in  Geology.  [part  i. 

others,  would  treat  the  Mosaic  days  or  geological  eras  as 
mere  moments  or  phases  of  the  creative  activity.  The  gram- 
matical and  scientific  difficulties  accumulated  in  the  previous 
schemes,  seem  to  have  occasioned  a  reaction,  especially 
among  Roman  Catholic  writers,  in  favor  of  regarding  the 
sacred  narrative  as  logical  rather  than  chronological,  as  an 
ideal  and  not  a  real  history  of  creation,  sufficiently  accordant 
indeed  with  science,  but  mainly  designed  for  religious  instruc- 
tion. The  dogma  of  the  fathers,  that  all  things  were  made  at 
once,  has  been  revived  in  the  light  of  modern  geology.  It  is 
argued  that  nebulae,  suns  and  planets,  strata,  floras  and  faunas 
must  have  been  created  simultaneously,  even  as  they  still  co- 
exist throughout  space  and  time  in  the  view  of  Omniscience, 
and  that  this  simultaneous  creation  is  simply  represented  by 
Moses  as  successive,  as  a  series  of  six  working  days  measured 
by  sunrise  and  sunset,  in  mere  accommodation  to  our  finite 
modes  of  conception.  Mr.  J.  P.  Gosse,  an  evangelical  church- 
man and  fellov/  of  the  Royal  Society,  would  seem  to  have 
been  the  first  to  broach  such  speculations  by  an  ingenious 
treatise  entitled  "  Omphalos,"  in  which  he  argued  that  as 
Adam  must  have  been  created  an  adult  yet  with  an  umbilicus 
suggestive  of  birth,  and  as  the  trees  must  have  been  created 
full-grown  yet  with  annual  rings  suggestive  of  growth,  so  the 
great  globe  itself  must  have  been  created  in  a  mature  state 
yet  with  strata,  floras  and  faunas  suggestive  of  long  geologi- 
cal ages  which  had  never  actually  occurred.  Dr.  Michelis  of 
Munster,  founder  of  a  magazine  styled  "  Nature  and  Revela- 
tion," and  designed  for  the  conciliation  of  the  Church  and 
Science,  appears  to  have  supported  the  mysticism  of  Augustine 
with,  the  idealism  of  Hegel,  by  designating  the  creative  days, 
with  all  their  crowded  annals,  as  mere  timeless  acts  or 
thoughts  of  God,  with  whom  to  create  is  but  to  think,  and 
who  therefore  thinks  or  creates  without  any  succession  of 
days  or  ages,  the  seeming  succession  in  the  inspired  record 
being  a  mere  concession  to  human  weakness.  Professor 
Reusch  of  Bonn,  converted  to  similar  views,  has  abandoned 
the  hope  of  any  exact  parallelism  between  Genesis  and 
geology,  and.  maintained  in  his  "Bible  and  Nature"  that  the 
six   days   are   not  six  successive  periods,  but  six  logically 


CHAP.  i\'.]  Eclecticism  in  Geology.  347 

sequent  stages  of  the  creative  activity,  six  actualizing  divine 
ideas,  six  creative  thoughts,  and  that  it  is  our  duty  to  believe 
that  Almighty  God  could  thus  produce  the  earth  as  a  fit 
abode  for  man  in  a  single  moment.  In  much  the  same  spirit 
Father  Walworth  has  disclaimed  any  scientific  cosmogony  in 
the  hexaemeron,  regarding  it  simply  as  a  doctrinal  exposition 
of  the  first  article  of  the  Apostles'  Creed.  And  some  Pro- 
testant divines,  while  fully  accepting  the  results  of  science, 
seem  inclined  to  treat  it  as  a  geogony  rather  than  as  a  universal 
cosmogony,  as  a  history  of  our  earth  alone  written  from  a 
purely  anthropocentric  standpoint,  with  the  view  of  assigning 
to  man  his  true  place  in  the  teleological  system  of  the  Creator. 
At  length  we  may  behold  the  whole  biblical  and  scientific 
history  of  the  globe  blended  by  a  similar  eclectic  treatment 
of  such  geological  miracles  as  the  Deluge,  the  Predicted  Con- 
flagration, and  the  Final  Renovation  of  the  Earth.  These 
were  favorite  themes  of  the  early  geologists,  when  as  yet  the 
most  extravagant  catastrophism  reigned  in  the  science.  Dr. 
Thomas  Burnet,  whose  "  Sacred  Theory  of  the  Earth,"  pub- 
lished with  elegant  illustrations,  was  praised  in  a  Latin  ode  by 
Addison,  sketched  the  chief  religious  epochs  of  the  globe  as 
great  geographical  changes  ;  first  its  chaotic  egg-like  mass  at 
Creation  ;  then  its  equal  nights  and  days  and  perpetual  spring 
in  Paradise  ;  afterwards  its  present  irregular  configuration  and 
climate  caused  by  the  Flood ;  and  at  length  its  renewal  by 
the  fires  of  the  Judgment.  Dr.  Whiston  then  published  a 
"  New  Theory  of  the  Earth,"  in  which,  as  we  have  seen,  he 
verified  these  moral  catastrophes  by  astronomical  events,  such 
as  the  incursion  of  comets  and  the  perturbations  of  the  planet 
upon  its  axis,  causing  violent  changes  in  its  structure  and 
climate.  Dr.  Worth ington  soon  followed  with  a  "New Theory 
of  the  Earth,"  aiming  to  be  more  Scriptural  as  well  as  scien- 
tific ;  but  simply  becoming  still  more  lavish  in  its  use  of  the 
miraculous  and  catastrophic  element.  Cuvier,  in  his  "Theory 
of  the  Earth,"  revived  a  number  of  these  speculations,  only 
himself  to  add  another  to  the  catalogue.  And  indeed  for 
three  centuries  the  literature  of  geology  was  filled  with  a  suc- 
cession of  such  sacred  cosmogonies,  one  after  another,  like 
children's  bubbles,  living  their  little  hour  of  applause. 


348  Eclecticism  in  Geology.  [part  i. 

The  Deluge  was  naturally  claimed  by  the  Neptunian  school 
of  Woodward  as  a  greal  terrestrial  convulsion  rather  than  a 
mere  moral  and  local  judgment.  The  whole  fossiliferous 
crust  of  the  globe  was  treated  as  its  sediment,  and  all  physi- 
cal geography  made  to  furnish  its  traces  in  the  abysmal  sea, 
the  jagged  mountain  peak,  the  indented  continent  and  inland 
desert,  which  were  supposed  to  indicate  the  convulsive  effects 
of  retributive  justice.  An  English  Rector,  Alexander  Cat- 
cott,  published  a  treatise  on  the  deluge,  in  which,  with  the 
aid  of  the  engraver,  he  graphically  depicted  the  pre-diluvian 
world  as  embracing  four  concentric  orbs:  the  outer,  composed 
of  the  waters  above  the  firmament;  the  next,  of  the  atmos- 
pheric heavens ;  then,  the  solid  crust  of  the  globe ;  and  last, 
the  central  abyss  or  foundation  of  the  great  deep,  which  was 
broken  up  at  the  same  time  that  the  windows  of  heaven  were 
opened  in  order  to  produce  the  flood.  The  poet  Thomson, 
in  explaining  how  the  course  of  the  seasons  became  disordered, 
would  seem  to  have  had  such  a  theory  in  mind,  as  he  de- 
scribes the  universal  burst  of  waters  "o'er  the  high-pil'd  hills 
of  fractured  earth, 

"  Till,  from  the  centre  to  the  streaming  clouds, 
A  shoreless  ocean  tumbled  round  the  globe," 

Supposed  relics  of  such  a  deluge  were  piously  collected  in 
cabinets  and  museums  and  made  the  theme  of  learned  and 
devout  discussions.  Father  Torrubia  found  the  remains  of 
antediluvian  giants  in  Spain ;  Increase  Mather  forwarded 
similar  relics  to  the  Royal  Society  in  London;  and  Scheuchzer 
discovered  in  Germany  the  famous  fossil  infant,  or  human 
witness  to  the  deluge,  which  was  afterwards  identified  by 
Cuvier  as  a  salamander,  but  not  until  it  had  furnished  inspira- 
tion for  some  pathetic  verses  in  which  it  was  apostrophized  as 
an  innocent  sufferer  for  the  sin  of  Adam. 

The  predicted  conflagration  of  the  earth  was,  in  like  man- 
ner, treated  by  the  Plutonian  school  of  Ray  and  Hooke  as  a 
vast  volcanic  catastrophe  rather  than  a  mere  prophetic  picture 
of  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem,  or  of  the  passing  away  of  the 
present  political  powers  of  the  world  amid  great  providential 
judgments.      Modern   geologists,   such   as    Pye   Smith  and 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  in  Geology.  349 

Hitchcock,  and  eloquent  divines,  such  as  Griffin,  Chahiiers 
and  Gumming  have  continued  so  to  depict  it.  Its  warnings 
and  precedents  have  been  found  in  the  sulphurous  storm 
which  destroyed  the  guilty  cities  of  Sodom  and  Gomor- 
rah, and  in  the  fiery  vengeance  which  overwhelmed  the 
dissolute  inhabitants  of  Herculaneum  and  Pompeii.  Its  mate- 
rials and  portents  have  been  sought  in  the  very  structure  and 
aspect  of  the  globe.  The  whole  under-world  .  has  been 
regarded  as  a  vast  magazine  of  combustible  materials,  ever 
and  anon  smoking  and  kindling  as  in  smothered  wrath,  "  kept 
in  store  and  rcser\-ed  unto  fire  for  the  day  of  judgment  and 
perdition  of  ungodly  men."  The  electric  flash  and  shock, 
the  vaster  tempest  of  lightning  and  thunder,  making  the 
Avhole  concave  ablaze  and  resonant,  has  been  claimed  as  but 
the  mimic  rehearsal  of  that  last,  dread  storm,  wherein  "the 
heavens  being  on  fire  shall  pass  away  with  a  great  noise." 
The  earthquake  and  volcano,  causing  vast  continents  to  trem- 
ble over  the  glowing  mass  beneath,  and  mountains  to  dis- 
gorge, like  flaming  mouths  of  hell,  and  flood  whole  provinces 
with  molten  soil,  are  viewed  as  the  very  process  by  Avhich 
yet  the  elements  shall  melt  with  fervent  heat  and  all  these 
things  shall  be  dissolved.  And  every  star  that  blazes  and 
vanishes  away  in  the  night,  telling  of  some  other  world  de- 
stroyed, is  but  a  harbinger  and  pledge  of  that  day  when  the 
earth  also  and  the  works  that  are  therein  shall  be  burned  up; 

"  The  cloud-capl  towers,  the  gorgeous  palaces, 
The  solemn  temples,  the  great  globe  itself, 
Yea,  all  which  it  inherit,  shall  dissolve, 
And,  like  an  unsubstantial  pageant  faded, 
Leave  not  a  rack  behind." 

And  both  catastrophists  and  uniformitarians  would  seem 
to  have  agreed  in  regarding  the  predicted  renewal  of  the 
earth  as  literally  a  material  transformation  of  its  whole  struc- 
ture, scenery  and  climate  rather  than  a  moral  and  spiritual 
change  in  the  character  of  its  inhabitants.  By  the  former 
school  of  Scripture  geologists  all  the  great  physical  evils 
of  famine,  drought  and  pestilence  were  treated  as  the  penal- 
ties of  original  sin,  the  blighting  of  Paradise  by  the  fall  of 
Adam.     The  earth  was  then  covered  with  thorns  and  barren- 


350  Eclecticism  in  Geology.  [part  i. 

ness,  that  by  the  sweat  of  his  brow  man  should  eat  bread. 
The  whole  creation  was  made  subject  to  vanity;  and  instead 
of  the  perpetual  Spring  of  Eden  was  miraculously  substituted 
the  distracting  march  of  the  seasons  through  the  middle 
zones  with  the  long  wintry  nights  of  the  poles;  as  Milton  has 
hinted: 

"  Some  say,  He  bid  His  angels  turn  askance 
The  poles  of  earth  twice  ten  degrees  and  more, 
From  the  sun's  axle;  they  with  labor  pushed 
Oblique  the  centric  globe." 

After  the  sin  of  man  had  reached  its  crisis  in  the  Deluge, 
the  ground  was  to  be  no  more  cursed  for  his  sake.  The  rain- 
bow was  then  set  in  the  cloud  as  the  sign  and  pledge  of  an 
amnesty  between  God  and  the  earth,  during  which  summer 
and  winter,  seed  time  and  harvest,  should  not  cease.  And 
when  this  long  era  of  grace  is  done,  and  the  judgment  of  the 
race  is  completed,  the  earth  shall  again  be  destroyed,  then 
by  fire  as  once  by  water,  and  (in  the  eloquent  language 
of  Chalmers)  shall  melt  with  a  heat  so  fervent  as  to  be  utterly 
dissolved,  and  become  without  form  and  void,  in  order  that  out 
of  the  second  chaos  it  may  be  made  to  arise  with  other  aspects 
of  magnificence  and  beauty,  as  a  fit  abode  of  righteousness. 

But  according  to  the  uniform itarian  school  of  physical  geo- 
graphy, the  structure  of  the  globe  has  been  simply  preadjusted 
to  the  mixed  character  of  man  as  a  dispensation  of  mingled 
cursing  and  blessing,  and  may  even  be  gradually  modified 
through  human  action,  in  the  progress  of  religion,  science  and 
civilization.  Already  many  of  its  vast  insalubrious  regions,  by 
his  organized  industry,  have  been  made  to  rejoice  and  blossom 
as  the  rose;  its  hidden  mineral  resources,  through  the  long 
epochs  of  culture,  have  been  so  developed  as  to  produce  iron 
for  stone,  silver  for  iron,  and  gold  for  brass ;  its  subtle  agents 
of  heat,  light  and  electricity  have  been  yoked  in  his  service, 
until  many  run  to  and  fro,  and  knowledge  is  increased.  And 
if  meanwhile,  as  some  geologists  tell  us,  the  earth  itself  is  ever 
slowly  nodding  through  the  precession  of  the  equinoxes  be- 
tween the  epochs  of  ice  and  of  fire,  or  revolving  with  the  sun 
between  nebulous  mist  and  planetary  life,  that  miraculous  time 
might  come,  when  its  snows  and  heats  should  be  blended  in 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  in  Anthropology.  351 

the  vernal  year  of  a  restored  paradise,  and  the  tree  of  hfe  shed 
its  fruit  every  month  for  the  heahng  of  the  nations. 

Eclecticism  in  Anthropology. 

The  scientific  anthropology  has  also  been  entered  and  tra- 
versed by  the  same  eclectic  spirit.  Animal  and  human  phy- 
siolog>%  philology,  archaeology,  as  fast  as  they  emerged,  have 
been  claimed  as  biblical  sciences,  serving  to  illustrate  the 
divine  attributes  and  confirm  revealed  doctrines.  Since  the 
time  of  Augustine,  it  has  been  the  orthodox  faith  that  the 
whole  human  race  was  created  in  the  divine  image,  with  domi- 
nion over  the  brutes,  in  a  paradise  of  innocence ;  but  after  the 
fall  of  Adam,  judicially  destroyed  by  a  universal  flood;  then 
renewed  from  the  loins  of  Noah  in  connection  with  surviving 
members  of  the  previous  fauna  preserved  in  the  ark ;  and  at 
length  miraculously  dispersed  from  the  Tower  of  Babel  over 
the  face  of  the  earth,  in  different  tribes  and  nations,  with  in- 
creasing confusion  of  speech,  and  ever-lapsing  or  perverted 
forms  of  culture.  And  in  supposed  agreement  with  this  an- 
thropology, pious  efforts  have  long  been  made  to  trace  the 
effects  of  the  apostacy  in  animal  remains  which  were  buried 
ages  before  the  appearance  of  man,  to  find  traditions  of  the 
deluge  among  savage  tribes,  and  the  monuments  of  Babel 
on  remote  islands  of  the  sea,  and  to  vindicate  the  divine  ven- 
geance as  still  expressed  in  the  pain's,  diseases  and  deformities 
which  afflict  the  human  frame. 

The  thcistic  argument  of  the  anthropological  sciences,  as 
hitherto  pursued,  has  been  made  to  embrace  the  evidence  of 
wise  and  benevolent  purpose  both  in  the  special  structure  of 
man  and  in  his  physical  relations  to  the  whole  animate  cre- 
ation. As  early  as  the  fourteenth  century,  according  to  the 
Jewish  Messenger,  Albo,  a  Castilian  rabbi,  anticipated  many  a 
famous  argument  since  his  day,  by  illustrating  the  far-reaching 
care  of  God  in  providing  for  the  perfectibility  and  preservation 
of  the  animal  and  human  species.  Archdeacon  Paley,  though 
he  did  not  neglect  other  provinces  of  natural  theology,  devoted 
himself  specially  to  the  admirable  mechanism  of  the  body,  as 
illustrated  by  that  of  a  watch,  to  examples  of  prospective  con- 
trivance for  the  care  of  the  young,  to  the  phenomena  of  in- 


352  Eclecticism  in  Anthropology.  [part  l 

stinct,  to  the  mai-vellous  adaptations  and  compensations  among 
the  different  organs  of  the  animal  economy,  and  to  the  more 
general  relations  between  all  animate  and  inanimate  nature. 
The  Rev.. William  Kirby,  in  his  Bridgewater  Treatise  on  the 
"  Creation  of  Animals,"  dwelt  with  careful  minuteness  upon  the 
functions  and  instincts  of  infusories,  polyps,  radiaries,  cephalo- 
pods,  etc.,  as  alike  resplendent  with  marks  of  divine  wisdom. 
Dr.  Peter  Mark  Roget,  in  the  treatise  on  "  Animal  and  Vege- 
table Physiology,"  enlarged  upon  the  benevolent  intention  of 
the  Creator  to  secure  the  welfare  of  individuals  as  seen  in  the 
conservative  and  reproductive  functions,  both  mechanical  and 
vital,  of  the  different  species  of  mollusca,  articulata  and  verte- 
brata.  Dr.  William  Prout,  in  the  Treatise  on  "  Chemistry, 
Meteorology  and  Digestion  with  reference  to  Natural  The- 
ology," drew  his  argument  from  the  pre-adjusted  proportions 
of  air,  water  and  land,  for  the  sustenance  of  life,  the  adapta- 
tions of  climate  to  the  inhabitants  of  the  different  zones,  the 
correspondence  between  the  external  mechanical  organs,  and 
the  internal  digestive  functions  of  carnivorous  or  herbivorous 
tribes,  and  the  vital  relations  between  plants  and  animals  in 
the  general  economy  of  nature.  Sir  Charles  Bell,  crowning 
this  series  of  treatises  with  his  masterly  monograph  on  "  The 
Hand,"  has  traced  its  beneficent  design  as  the  distinguishing 
member  in  the  human  frame,  the  organ  of  touch  and  sensi- 
bility, the  instrument  of  mechanical  and  artistic  skill,  and  the 
prime  mover  in  all  progress  and  civilization.  In  our  own  day, 
and  with  a  direct  bearing  upon  current  speculations,  Professor 
Henry  J.  Clark,  in  his  work  on  "  Mind  in  Nature,"  has  made 
it  his  aim  to  refer  the  origin  of  life  and  the  development  of 
animals  to  a  foreknowing  Power  in  the  universe,  which  prede- 
termines and  attends  all  successive  and  contemporaneous  vital 
phenomena.  And  indeed  the  chief  authorities  in  compar- 
ative zoology,  from  Linnaeus  to  Agassiz,  have  never  scrupled 
to  recognize  a  divine  wisdom  not  merely  in  each  organ  and 
function,  but  in  that  whole  organic  scale  of  advancing  types 
which  at  length  become  recapitulated  in  ]\Ian,  as  he  stands  at 
the  summit  of  living  nature, — 

"  The  beauty  of  the  world  !  the  paragon 
Of  animals !" 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  in  Anthropology.  353 

But  it  is  in  that  dim  archaic  region  of  anthropology  border- 
ing upon  geology,  where  man  first  appears  upon  the  earth, 
that  the  eclectic  spirit  is  now  most  blindly  and  rashly  ventur- 
ing. So  long  as  Adam  was  pictured  as  a  clay  image,  moulded 
Promethean-like  during  the  closing  hours  of  the  creative 
week,  the  sacred  record  seemed  simple  and  consistent.  And 
even  after  palaeontology  had  unfolded  its  vast  organic  scale 
of  fossil  and  living  species,  through  countless  ages,  from  the 
mollusk  up  to  man,  it  was  not  very  difficult  to  connect  it  with 
the  generations  of  Genesis.  Indeed,  by  the  great  majority  of 
scientific  interpreters,  it  is  still  treated  as  a  series  of  abrupt 
creations.  The  classifications  of  naturalists,  from  the  times 
of  Linnaeus  and  Guvier,  with  their  serial  orders,  genera,  and 
species,  are  simply  accepted  as  so  many  archetypes  or  ideals 
of  the  Creator,  which  He  has  separately  produced  and  realized 
in  fulfillment  of  a  foreordained  scheme,  terminating  in  man  as 
the  image  of  God  and  lord  of  nature.  Professor  Owen  de- 
clared that  in  the  Divine  mind  the  knowledge  of  such  a  being 
as  man  existed  long  before  man  appeared  upon  the  earth. 
Agassiz,  in  his  Zoology,  not  only  denied  that  the  growing 
resemblance  of  animal  and  human  species  in  the  Secondaiy 
and  Tertiary  epochs  was  due  to  any  parental  descent  from  the 
earlier  to  the  later  mammals  and  reptiles,  but  maintained  that 
their  only  connection  is  to  be  sought  in  the  view  of  the 
Creator  Himself,  whose  aim  in  successively  creating  all  the 
different  types  which  have  passed  away  was  to  introduce  man 
upon  our  globe,  as  the  end  toward  which  the  whole  animal 
creation  has  tended  from  the  first  appearance  of  the  palaeozoic 
fishes.  And  Hugh  Miller,  in  his  "Testimony  of  the  Rocks," 
declared  that  Owen  and  Agassiz,  by  thus  retracing  the  divine 
archetypes  which  preceded  the  glorious  form  of  man,  were 
but  echoing  the  hymn  of  the  Psalmist,  "  In  Thy  book  all  my 
members  were  written,  which  in  continuance  were  fashioned 
when  as  yet  there  was  none  of  them." 

Proceeding  upon  such  scientific  views,  some  fanciful  writers 
have  even  depicted  with  scenic  effect  the  creative  fiats,  by 
which  God  called  forth  plant,  bird  and  beast,  and  saw  that 
each  was  good.  Schubert  daringly  describes  them  as  the  pro- 
ductions of  a  creative  art,  which  at  every  throb  of  its  activity 
2U 


354  Eclecticism  in  Anthropology.  [part  i. 

exulted  in  beholding  the  manifold  forms  of  life.  Keerl,  in  his 
"  History  of  Creation,"  with  still  bolder  fancy,  represents 
Nature  in  the  process  of  producing  man,  as  shattering  mould 
after  mould,  and  hiding  them  away  in  rocky  graves,  till  she 
found  the  finished  ideal  with  which  alone  she  could  be  satis- 
fied. •  Schlegel,  in  his  "  Philosophy  of  Life,"  maintained  that 
poisonous  reptiles  and  other  malevolent  monsters  are  not 
divine  creations,  but  Satanic  perversions  of  the  productive 
energies  of  nature,  and  the  anthropoid  ape  especially  but  a 
spiteful  parody  upon  the  image  of  God  in  man.  Delitzsch,  in 
his  "  Genesis,"  agrees  with  Ebrard  in  identifying  the  catas- 
trophic phenomena  of  Plutonism  as  but  the  volcanic  birth 
throes  of  the  earth,  when,  at  the  divine  command,  it  brought 
forth  the  mammals  of  the  tertiary  epoch,  and  would  thus  ex- 
plam  the  disarrangement  of  the  fossiliferous  strata  which  pre- 
ceded the  appearance  of  man.  And  monstrous  as  would 
seem  the  miracles  of  a  sudden  creation  of  species,  did  we  stop 
to  fancy  them,  yet  the  great  mass,  probably,  have  still  no 
clearer  view  than  that  of  Milton  in  his  Paradise  Lost : 

*'  The  grassy  clods  now  calv'd;   now  half  appear'd 
The  tawny  lion,  pawing  to  get  free 
His  hinder  parts,  then  springs  as  broke  from  bonds, 
And  rampant  shakes  his  brinded  mane." 

There  is,  however,  a  large  and  increasing  class  who  are  now 
seeking  to  blend  the  whole  palseontological  series  in  one  con- 
tinuous creation  or  creative  evolution.  When  as  yet  it  had 
been  but  partially  restored  and  was  still  broken  by  long  gaps 
and  missing  links,  the  interposition  of  a  Creator  seemed  ne- 
cessary at  every  step ;  but  as  these  were  gradually  filled  and 
supplied,  and  supposed  laws  of  transmutation  and  descent 
were  suggested,  it  has  become  a  temptation  to  admit  such 
laws  into  the  creative  process,  with  other  natural  laws,  as  but 
the  expression  of  the  divine  wisdom;  and  by  degrees  the 
whole  animate  creation  has  been  surrendered  to  their  sway. 
At  first  only  the  vegetable  and  animal  kingdoms  were  con- 
ceded to  evolutionism.  Since  Darwin,  Hooker  and  Wallace 
have  been  joined  by  such  veteran  leaders  as  Lyell,  De  Can- 
dollc  and  Asa  Gray,  and  the  younger  working  naturalists 
have  followed  them  in  a  body,  they  have  begun  to  receive 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  in  AniJiropoIogy.  355 

recruits  from  the  ranks  of  earnest  laymen  and  zealous  divines, 
bringing  with  them  the  orthodox  standard  of  creationism  into 
the  very  thick  of  the  battle.  Chancellor  Winchell,  in  his 
"  Doctrine  of  Evolution,"  accepts  it  as  the  law  of  the  Creator 
throughout  the  inorganic  world,  and  possibly  also  the  lower 
organic  kingdom,  and  believes  it  to  be  consistent  with  the 
Scriptures  as  interpreted  by  many  of  the  greatest  divines  and 
theologians.  Dr.  Brown,  of  Berwick,  as  a  member  of  the 
Evangelical  Alliance,  in  discussing  the  "  Religious  Aspects 
of  the  Development  Hypothesis,"  claimed  it  as  applicable 
certainly  in  the  vegetable  world  and  probably  in  the  animal 
world,  and  as  compatible  with  the  articles  of  the  Westminster 
Catechism.  The  Rev.  George  Henslow,  in  his  Actonian  prize 
essays  on  "Evolution  and  Religion,"  declares  that  to  him  it  is 
infinitely  more  probable  that  all  extinct  and  living  species 
have  been  developed  by  natural  laws  than  that  they  should 
have  been  severally  due  to  creative  fiats,  though  he  is  not  yet 
prepared  to  admit  that  man  has  been  evolved  by  precisely 
the  same  processes  as  the  horse  from  the  palaeotherium.  St. 
George  Mivart,  the  distinguished  Roman  Catholic  naturalist, 
in  his  work  on  the  "  Genesis  of  Species,"  holds  evolutionism 
to  be  consistent  with  the  teachings  of  Augustine,  Aquinas 
and  Suarez,  and  admits  that  it  is  the  method  of  creation 
throughout  living  nature,  including  even  the  animal  frame  of 
man,  but  for  the  addition  of  the  human  soul  requires  a  new 
special  act  of  Divine  Power.  Mr.  St.  Clair,  in  a  work  enti- 
tled "  Darwinism  and  Design  or  Creation  by  Evolution," 
makes  it  his  especial  aim  to  show  that  the  theory,  so  far  from 
being  anti-biblical,  i.^  a  new  illustration  of  the  wisdom  and 
beneficence  of  God  throughout  His  creation,  from  the  birth 
of  the  solar  system  to  the  origin  of  moral  species.  It  will  be 
but  a  step  further,  to  blend  evolutionism  with  creationism  in 
the  genesis  of  the  first  Adam.  Dr.  Lange,  in  his  Commentary, 
hints  profoundly  that  there  must  have  been  the  highest  exci- 
tation and  effort  of  the  earth  in  the  formation  of  man  as  the 
chief  work  of  creation,  and  beautifully  depicts  him  in  the  same 
moment  waked  into  life  and  intelligence  as  by  a  kiss  of  divine 
love.  Professor  Tayler  Lewis,  with  a  still  more  scientific 
view,  not  only  rejects  the  idea  of  an  instantaneous  or  artificial 


356  Eclecticism  in  Anthropology.  [part  i. 

creation  of  man  from  nothing  or  from  crude  matter,  as  a  mere 
manipulated  statue  or  dead  organization;  but  seeks  to  trace 
his  formation  through  the  whole  previous  process  of  nature, 
from  the  lowest  up  to  the  highest  animal  type,  with  connect- 
ing links,  until  the  point  was  reached  where  the  human 
species  by  a  special  act  was  constituted  in  the  divine  image. 
And  when  once  the  ideas  of  time,  causality  and  organic  pro- 
cess have  thus  been  admitted  in  this  region,  it  may  not  be 
long  before  the  secular  evolution  of  Adam  from  the  animal 
species  shall  be  claimed  to  be  as  scriptural  and  orthodox  as 
that  of  the  animal  from  the  vegetable  races,  or  that  of  the 
organized  planet  from  the  inorganic  nebula. 

The  same  eclectic  spirit  is  also  seeking  to  blend  the  new 
speculative  ethnology  with  the  Mosaic  tables  of  genealogy. 
Until  the  discovery  of  the  American  and  Polynesian  tribes,  it 
was  easy  to  regard  Adam  as  the  father  of  the  whole  human 
family,  and  Noah  as  the  founder  of  all  existing  nations,  and 
even  since  that  discovery  the  orthodox  traditional  ethnography 
has  long  held  its  ground.  Learned  investigators,  such  as 
Bochart,  Le  Clerc,  Michaelis,  and  Sir  William  Jones,  have 
maintained  that  the  three  great  continental  races  of  Asia, 
Africa  and  Europe,  are  the  descendants  of  the  three  sons  of 
Noah;  of  Shem,  Ham,  and  Japhct.  And  commentators,  such 
as  Lowth  and  Bush,  have  sought  in  the  subsequent  history 
and  present  condition  of  those  races  a  fulfilment  of  the  predic- 
tions of  Noah  to  their  progenitors;  of  the  blessing  upon  Shem, 
in  the  religious  mission  of  the  Shemitic  nations  of  Asia,  the 
founders  of  Judaism  and  Christianity;  of  the  benediction  upon 
Japhet,in  the  great  civilizing  and  colonizing  nations  of  Europe  ; 
and  of  the  curse  upon  Ham,  the  servant  of  servants,  in  the 
Canaanites  who  were  expelled  by  the  Hebrews,  and  in  the 
Africans,  who  were  subjugated  by  the  Romans,  and  have  since 
been  enslaved  by  the  English  in  the  American  Colonies. 

But  the  difficulty  of  including  all  tribes  and  peoples  in 
this  genealogy  has  combined  with  theories  of  the  multiple 
origin  of  the  species  to  suggest  new  schemes  of  reconciliation. 
Agassiz,  reviving  the  doctrine  of  Peyrere  as  an  hypothesis, 
maintained  that  the  truth  of  both  Scripture  and  science  would 
be  conserved  by  accepting  Adam  as  the  head  of  the  Jewish  or 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  in  Anthropology.  2)S7 

Caucasian  race,  with  its  three  great  Shemitic,  Hamitic  and 
Japhetic  branches  in  Western  Asia,  and  yet  allowing  the  co- 
existence of  other  races  created  in  the  same  human  nature, 
but  not  yet  brought  under  the  divine  economy,  such  as  the 
inhabitants  of  Nod,  among  whom  Cain  married  and  built  a 
city.  Dr.  John  Pye  Smith,  in  his  "  Geology  and  Scripture," 
consistently  with  his  idea  of  a  special  local  creation,  cautiously 
admitted  that  the  proof  of  a  Hamite  and  pre-Adamite  race,  if 
established,  would  not  necessarily  be  inconsistent  with  the 
statement  in  Acts,  that  God  hath  made  of  one  blood  all  men, 
since  they  might  have  the  same  psychological  structure  though 
created  at  different  geographical  centres  ;  nor  would  it  unsettle 
the  doctrine  of  the  first  Adam,  since  he  might  still  serve  as  a 
figure  of  Christ  in  the  new  covenant,  and  the  mystery  of  ori- 
gmal  sin  would  remain  the  same  inscrutable  fact  as*upon  the 
other  hypothesis.  Dr.  Dominick  McCausland,  in  his  work 
entitled,  "Adam  and  the  Adamite,"  has  endeavored  to  harmo- 
nize Scripture  and  ethnology,  by  maintaining  that  the  Book 
of  Genesis  refers  almost  exclusively  to  the  Adamic  race,  which 
was  created  as  the  last,  and  not  the  first,  of  other  pre-Adamite 
races,  known  as  the  African  and  Patagonian  savages  of  the 
present  day,  and  which  was  introduced  among  them  as  a  new 
and  higher  species,  made  in  the  divine  image  and  placed  under 
a  supernatural  dispensation,  with  a  view  to  the  ultimate  re- 
demption of  all  mankind.  The  anonymous  author  of  "  Prime- 
val Man  Unveiled,  or  the  Anthropology  of  the  Bible,"  having 
maintained  in  his  previous  work  on  "  The  Stars  and  the  An- 
gels," that  the  angelic  and  human  natures  are  the  same,  now 
argues  that  the  pre-Adamite  remains  in  different  parts  of  the 
globe,  claimed  as  denizens  of  the  stone,  the  bronze,  or  the  iron 
ages,  are  but  the  degenerate  bodies  of  fallen  angels,  the  relics 
of  a  Satanic  race  which  once  flourished  with  abortive  strength 
in  Central  America,  and  thence  bequeathed  a  diabolic  civiliza- 
tion to  India  and  Egypt,  when  as  yet  Europe  was  an  abode 
of  primeval  savages  bearing  the  same  relation  to  their  brethren 
in  Guatemala  and  Yucatan  that  the  cultivated  nations  of  Eng- 
land and  France  now  bear  to  the  Patagonian  and  the  Hottentot 
And  thus  the  wildest  dreams  of  angelology  are  strangely  blend- 
ing with  the  latest  speculations  of  the  ethnologist. 


358  Eclecticism  z;.  Antlu-opology.  [part  i. 

In  the  same  rash  manner,  the  new  discoveries  of  the  archaeo- 
logist are  pressed  into  union  with  the  bibhcal  chronology  and 
history.  For  centuries  it  has  been  the  orthodox  belief  that 
the  whole  human  epoch  may  be  included  within  a  period  of 
six  thousand  years ;  that  after  the  first  two  thousand  years  the 
entire  race,  except  the  family  of  Noah,  was  destroyed  by  the 
Deluge,  and  that  during  the  next  two  thousand  years  it 
became  scattered  over  the  earth  with  an  ever  deteriorating 
civilization.  And  a  vast  amount  of  learning  has  been  ex- 
pended in  verifying  this  opinion.  Leading  chronologers,  such 
as  Usher,  Hales  and  Prideaux,  have  sought  to  combine  the 
evidence  of  profane  with  sacred  history  at  every  point  of  con- 
tact. Mythologists,  such  as  Bryant,  Faber  and  Harcourt,  have 
traced  the  coincidence  of  Gentile  and  Jewish,  Pagan  and  Chris- 
tian traditions,  as  between  Vulcan  and  Tubal-Cain,  Apollo  and 
Jubal,  Deucalion  and  Noah,  the  Titans  and  the  Babel- 
builders.  And  antiquarians,  such  as  Thorowgood,  Monte- 
zini,  Boudinot,  President  Styles,  and  a  host  of  others,  have 
endeavored  to  identify  the  Aborigines  of  America  as  the  ex- 
pelled Canaanites,  or  the  lost  tribes  of  Israel,  or  wandering 
Jews  who  anticipated  the  discovery  of  Columbus,  or  emigrant 
Tyrians  to  whom  the  Apostle  Thomas  had  preached  Chris- 
tianity. 

But  the  alleged  discovery  of  som^e  antediluvian  monuments 
and  records  in  Egypt,  Assyria  and  Central  America,  and  of 
pre-historic  skulls  and  implements  in  Denmark,  France  and 
England,  together  with  theories  of  the  secular  development 
of  the  human  species,  have  led  to  an  expansion  of  the  historic 
era  from  thousands  to  millions  of  years,  with  corresponding 
efforts  to  adjust  it  to  the  sacred  records.  By  many,  indeed, 
the  old  biblical  chronology  is  simply  re-afifirmed  or  but 
slightly  extended.  Reginald  Stuart  Poole,  in  his  "  Genesis  of 
Man,"  dates  the  creation  of  Adam  about  the  year  5361  B.C., 
and  the  Deluge  about  the  year  3099  b.  c,  and  claims  that  at 
the  epoch  of  the  fourth  dynasty  in  Egypt,  2400  b.  c,  as  high 
a  civilization  existed  as  at  any  later  period.  Piazzi  Smitli,  in 
his  works  on  the  Great  Pyramid,  maintains  that  it  was  built 
about  4000  years  ago,  by  the  descendants  of  Noah,  under 
divine  inspiration,  as  a  meteorological  and  astronomical  monu- 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  in  AntJiropology.  359 

ment,  expressing  in  its  position,  size,  weight  and  temperature 
more  scientific  knowledge  than  is  possessed  at  the  present 
day ;  that  the  other  pyramids,  cromlechs  and  mounds  of  Asia, 
Europe  and  America  are  but  debased  imitations  of  a  later 
date;  and  that  the  stone,  bronze  and  iron  epochs  of  the 
archaeologist  are  simply  co-existent  rather  than  successive 
stages  of  barbarism  and  civilization,  now  occurring  in  different 
parts  of  the  earth.  Mr.  James  C.  Southall  of  Richmond,  in 
his  learned  treatise  on  the  "  Recent  Origin  of  Man,"  also 
discards  the  chronometry  of  the  chipped  flints  and  bone  im- 
plements, and  finds  the  beginnings  of  all  civilization  within 
2700,  or  at  most  4000  years  b.  c,  in  the  industrial  arts  of 
Tubal-Cain,  the  fine  arts  of  Jubal,  and  the  cities  of  Nod  and 
Enoch,  as  renewed  after  the  Flood  among  the  Egyptians, 
Chinese  and  Assyrians. 

By  another  growing -class,  however,  the  old  biblical  chro- 
nology has  already  been  largely  expanded  or  virtually  aban- 
doned. Bunsen  claims  that  there  is  no  chronological  element 
in  Genesis.  Dr.  Hodge,  as  if  anticipating  such-  a  result, 
admits  that  the  Scriptures  do  not  teach  us  how  long  men 
have  existed  on  the  earth,  their  tables  of  genealogy  being 
simply  intended  to  prove  that  Christ  was  the  son  of  David 
and  of  the  seed  of  Abraham.  Dr.  William  H.  Green,  in  his 
"  Pentateuch  Vindicated,"  explains  that  the  sacred  registers, 
consistently  with  their  design,  do  not  include  all  the  genera- 
tions or  births  in  a  given  line,  and  that,  in  some  cases,  a  single 
progenitor  is  said  to  have  begotten  several  whole  nations,  the 
Jebusite,  the  Amorite,  the  Girgasite,  and  the  Hivite.  It  has 
also  been  suggested  that  the  names  of  the  patriarchs  may  re- 
present not  only  individual  progenitors  but  successive  dynas- 
ties, or  leading  families,  lasting  through  long  periods,  like  the 
Saxon  and  Norman  successions,  or  the  houses  of  York,  Lan- 
caster, Stuart  and  Hanover.  And  other  writers,  accepting  the 
pre-Adamite  view,  find  ample  space  outside  of  the  Jewish  or 
Caucasian  genealogy,  for  the  oldest  monuments  of  pre-historic 
barbarism  and  non-Adamic  civilization.  Macausland,  though 
he  refers  the  ruins  of  Egypt  and  Mexico  alike  to  a  Hamitic 
race  of  Babel-builders  long  since  extinct,  argues  that  a  pre- 
diluvian  civilization  was  founded  by  Jubal  and  Tubal-Cain  in 


360  Eclecticism  in  Anthropology.  [part  i. 

Central  Asia,  and  thence  flowed  eastward,  with  the  exiled 
Cain  among  the  pre-Adamite  savages  of  China,  where  it  still 
lingers,  stagnated  by  the  Mongolian  blood.  The  author  of 
"Primeval  'Man  Unveiled"  conjectured  that  the  ruin's  of 
Central  America  indicate  a  pre-Adamic  and  Satanic  civiliza- 
tion, whose  Eden  could  be  followed  by  no  Calvary,  and  whose 
Tubal-Cains  and  Jubals  flourished  as  the  founders  of  arts  and 
sciences,  without  a  Seth  or  a  Noah  to  save  them  from  hope- 
less degeneracy.  The  same  writer  agrees  with  Miss  Frances 
Rolleston,  the  author  of"  Mazzaroth,"  in  finding  remnants  of 
an  antediluvian  theology  in  the  constellations,  such  as  the 
Virgin,  the  Scorpion,  the  Centaur,  the  Goat,  which  the  patri- 
archs are  supposed  to  have  invented  and  used  as  prophetic 
types  of  the  promised  Messiah,  the  conflict  with  Satan,  the 
incarnation,  and  the  atonement. 

The  sacred  philologist  is  also  seeking  prematurely  for  a 
biblical  theory  of  languages  as  well  as  races.  It  has  been  held 
by  the  rabbins,  the  fathers,  the  schoolmen  and  the  reformers, 
that  the  Hebrew  tongue  was  divinely  taught  to  Adam  in  Para- 
dise when  he  gave  names  to  the  animals,  and  thenceforward 
continued  the  one,  universal  language  after  the  Deluge,  while 
the  whole  earth  was  still  of  one  speech.  And  notwithstanding 
the  endless  diversities  in  structure  and  etymology  which  now 
prevail,  many  leading  linguists,  on  the  theory  of  a  common 
origin  of  languages  as  held  by  Latham  and  Max  Muller,  have 
been  striving  with  immense  learning  and  ingenuity  to  trace 
back  all  existing  dialects,  through  the  inflexional,  agglutinate 
and  monosyllabic  stages,  to  the  one  primitive  tongue  of  Adam 
and  Noah.  Arthur  James  Johnes  was  countenanced  by  Pri- 
chard  in  an  effort  thus  to  collect  the  philological  proofs  of  the 
original  unity  and  recent  origin  of  the  human  race.  Bunsen, 
in  his  "  Philosophy  of  Universal  History  as  applied  to  Lan- 
guage and  Religion,"  has  argued  that  the  high  inflexional 
languages  of  Europe  and  Asia  are  of  the  same  stock;  that  the 
agglutinate  tongues  of  America  and  Polynesia  are  scions  of 
the  Asiatic ;  and  that  the  monosyllabic  Chinese  is  the  oldest 
monument  of  the  original  pre-diluvian  speech,  borne  away 
before  the  flood  to  the  high  table-land  of  Mongolia  or  land 
of  Nod,  in  which  Cain  settled.     The   Rev.  Joseph  Edkins,  of 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  in  Anthropology.  361 

the  Ningpo  Mission,  in  his  work  entitled  "  China's  Place  in 
Philology,"  maintains  that  the  Chinese  are  descendants  of 
Ham,  who  migrated  eastward  after  the  Deluge,  and  that  their 
language  is  a  relic  of  the  primitive  monosyllabic  tongue  of 
Adam  and  Noah,  akin  not  only  to  the  Hebrew  and  the  Greek, 
but  even  the  English,  in  roots,  syntax  and  inflexional  growth. 
Mr.  Lewis  Morgan,  in  his  elaborate  Smithsonian  treatise  on 
"  Systems  of  Consanguinity,"  has  projected  a  scheme  of  philo- 
logical and  genealogical  inquiries  tending  to  show  that  the 
North  American  tribes,  together  with  other  savage  as  well  as 
civilized  races,  are  both  in  blood  and  speech  the  branches  of 
one  human  family,  which  has  risen  from  a  state  of  promiscu- 
ous intercourse  to  its  present  domestic  and  social  refinement. 
But  the  difficulty  of  compressing  the  enormous  growth  of  so 
many  races  and  languages  within  the  received  chronology, 
combined  with  theories  of  their  plural  origin  as  advanced  by 
Steinthal  and  Schleicher,  has  led  some  devout  scientists  and 
divines,  like  Agassiz  and  Macausland,  to  treat  the  rude  inor- 
ganic tongues  of  China,  America  and  Polynesia,  as  separate 
products  of  pre-Adamite  races,  among  whom  Cain  was  exiled, 
while  the  more  refined  and  highly  organized  languages  of  the 
Caucasian  or  Adamic  race  are  claimed  as  relics  of  the  divine 
paradisaic  speech,  which  the  great  confusion  at  Babel  has  only 
broken  into  brilliant  dialects,  the  still  jarring  echoes  of  a  pri- 
meval harmony. 

The  great  miracles  wrought  for  the  human  race  under  both 
dispensations,  have  also  ever  been  claimed  as  true  divine  in- 
terpositions, admitting  of  a  scientific  verification.  It  was 
maintained  by  Bryant  and  Harcourt,  that  the  ark  which  saved 
the  second  father  of  mankind  still  figures  in  the  traditions  of 
all  nations,  and  its  stowage  was  elaborately  calculated  by 
Bishop  Wilkins  and  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  who  proved  that  it 
could  receive  in  its  three  stories  Noah  and  his  sons,  with  their 
families  and  provisions  for  their  maintenance,  pairs  of  all  the 
domestic  animals,  with  an  adequate  supply  of  fruits,  vegetables 
fodder,  and  1,825  sheep  as  food  for  the  beasts  of  prey.  The 
tower  of  Babel  was  identified  among  the  ruins  of  Babylon,  and 
the  great  confusion  and  dispersion  still  attested  by  the  existing 
jargon  of  languages  and  conflict  of  nations.     The  Messianic 


362  Eclecticism  in  Anthropology.  [part  i. 

prophecies  were  corroborated  by  a  concurrent  Gentile  tradition 
as  seen  in  the  visit  of  Balaam  and  the  Magi  of  the  East.  The 
incarnation  also  had  its  dim  caricature  or  presentiment  in  the 
avatars  of -the  Hindoo  and  the  theogonies  of  the  Greek-.  Ac- 
cording to  many  writers,  the  cures  of  the  sick,  blind  and  lame, 
were  genuine  miracles  of  love  and  power,  which  were  not  re- 
stricted to  the  Apostles,  but  afterwards  repeated  by  saints  and 
martyrs,  and  are  to  this  day  possible,  according  to  promise,  in 
answer  to  the  prayer  of  faith.  The  transfiguration,  resurrec- 
tion, and  ascension  of  Christ,  simply  anticipated  and  exempli- 
fied that  glorious  humanity  which  is  yet  to  appear  on  the 
scene  of  the  renewed  earth  as  the  Second  Adam  of  another 
paradise.  Even  the  animal  creation,  it  is  conjectured,  will 
share  in  the  redemption  as  it  has  also  shared  in  the  apostacy. 
Dr.  Kirby  could  conjecture  that  there  were  no  carnivorous 
beasts  in  Eden.  Professor  Goldwin  Smith  has  suggested  that 
man  himself,  as  he  becomes  civilized,  grows  less  carnivorous 
and  more  kmdly  in  his  relations  to  the  brute  creation;  that 
the  animal  races  so  participate  in  his  progress  that  the  tame 
predominate  over  the  wild  species,  and  that  their  powers  of 
domestication  and  education  are  on  the  increase.  Hosts  of 
divines,  poets  and  philosophers,  have  also  held  with  Bishop 
Butler,  that  animals  maybe  immortal  and  play  some  important 
part  in  the  perfected  human  system.  And  if  the  civilized  dog, 
as  compared  with  his  wolfish  ancestor,  be  taken  for  a  harbinger 
of  such  a  millennium,  it  might  seem  but  the  natural  growth  and 
miraculous  flower  of  organic  nature,  for  the  wolf  to  dwell  with 
the  lamb,  the  leopard  with  the  kid,  the  calf  with  the  young 
lion,  and  a  little  child  to  lead  them. 

The  physical  sciences,  as  thus  traversed  by  the  eclectic 
spirit,  have  been  filled  with  the  exploits  of  a  daring  faith,  as 
brilliant,  but  often  as  useless,  as  the  mere  pastime  of  a  tour- 
nament. 

Surveying  next  the  psychical  sciences,  we  shall  there  be- 
hold elaborate  systems  of  blended  thought  and  faith,  which 
for  centuries  have  served  as  the  strong-holds  of  orthodoxy, 
but  seem  now  becoming  like  moss-grown  fortifications,  made 
useless  by  a  change  of  -base  and  of  tactics.     In  contrast  with 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  in  Psychology.  363 

the  devout  speculations  which  we  have  traced  in  the  physical 
sciences,  these  more  sacred  tenets  are  still  claimed  as  the  doc- 
trines of  Scripture,  as  well  as  true  theories  of  science;  and  it 
is  only  now  and  then  that  a  few  religious  eclectics  have  been 
rash  enough  to  abandon  them  for  any  new  scientific  opinions 
that  have  been  broached  in  their  place. 

Eclecticism  in  Psychology. 

The  whole  scientific  psychology  has  thus  been  long  held 
and  defended  as  a  purely  theological  province.  Owing  to  the 
imperfect  state  of  the  sciences  of  logic,  ethics  and  aesthetics, 
the  crudest  notions  were  blended  with  biblical  teachings  by 
the  rabbins,  fathers,  schoolmen  and  reformers.  The  different 
mental  and  moral  faculties  were  metaphorically  treated  as 
functions  of  the  reins,  the  bowels,  the  heart,  as  well  as  of  the 
external  senses  and  members,  and  as  such  requiring  to  be 
cleansed,  remedied  and  renewed  by  divine  grace.  The  dual 
and  triple  constitution  of  body,  soul  and  spirit  was  based  in 
Scripture  as  reflected  by  the  two-fold  nature  of  Christ  and 
the  Trinity  of  Divine  Persons.  And  even  the  later  biblical 
psychology  does  not  seem  to  have  advanced  very  far  beyond 
the  traditional  and  popular  stand-point.  Bunyan  depicted  it 
allegorically  in  his  "Holy  War"  by  representing  the  whole 
Christian  life  as  a  conflict  of  infernal  and  supernal  powers  for 
the  possession  of  the  city  of  Man-soul  with  its  eye-gate,  ear- 
gate,  and  mouth-gate  and  its  various  personified  thoughts, 
passions  and  faculties.  Dr.  George  Combe,  with  less  of  me- 
taphor, has  endeavored  to  reconcile  the  psychical  map  of 
phrenology  with  the-  claims  of  orthodoxy.  Coleridge  even 
sought  for  the  Kantian  distinction  between  the  understanding 
and  the  reason  in  that  between  the  mind  of  the  flesh  and  the 
spirit  as  defined  by  St.  Paul.  Delitzsch  still  finds  the  ancient 
trichotomy,  or  triple  human  constitution,  in  the  creation  of 
man  as  a  living  soul  resulting  from  the  union  of  body  and 
spirit.  And  now  and  then  faulty  arguments  for  the  divine  be- 
nevolence are  built  upon  ethical  and  sesthetical  theories  which 
do  not  stand  the  strictest  tests  of  mental  science,  as  when 
the  imagination  and  the  conscience  are  treated  as  susceptible 
to  beauty  and  goodness,  and  not  al;:o  to  deformity  and  sin. 


364  Eclecticism  in  Psychology.  [part  i. 

The  proper  theistic  argument  of  the  psychological  sciences 
has  been  made  to  include  proofs  of  the  divine  goodness  and 
justice  both  in  the  mental  constitution  and  in  its  wonderful 
correlations  .with  external  nature.  The  earlier  theists,  more 
especially  occupied  with  the  physical  sciences,  only  touched 
incidentally  upon  the  argument.  The  two  Balguys,  father  and 
son,  seem  to  have  been  the  first  to  attempt  it  with  their  trea- 
tises on  Beauty  and  Virtue,  and  the  Divine  Benevolence  vin- 
dicated against  sceptics.  The  didactic  poets,  from  Akenside 
to  Campbell,  may  have  practically  promoted  it  by  their  strains 
upon  the  pleasures  of  Imagination,  of  Hope,  and  of  Memory. 
Paley,  in  his  chapter  on  the  goodness  of  the  Deity,  has  sketched 
the  superadded  pleasures  of  animal  sensation,  in  youth  and 
age,  through  summer  and  winter;  the  peculiar  enjoyments 
of  rational  beings  in  the  exercise  of  choice,  the  acquisition  of 
property  and  the  pursuit  of  knowledge  ;  and  the  philosophical 
alleviations  of  the  moral  enigmas  and  evils  which  distress  the 
reason  and  conscience.  Butler  announced  the  foreseen  pains 
and  pleasures  of  moral  actions  to  be  the  evidence  of  a  divine 
Lawgiver,  and  the  actual  rewards  and  punishments  of  His 
government.  Dr.  Chalmers,  in  his  Bridgewater  Treatise  on 
"  The  Adaptation  of  External  Nature  to  the  Moral  and  Intel- 
lectual Constitution  of  Man,"  after  carefully  distinguishing  the 
nature  of  the  reasoning,  has  gathered  proof  of  the  Divine 
wisdom,  goodness  and  justice  from  the  different  faculties  and 
laws  of  the  mind,  the  pleasures  and  miseries  of  its  virtuous  and 
vicious  affections  and  habits,  and  the  corresponding  provision 
in  the  whole  material  and  social  system  for  gratifying  and  dis- 
ciplining its  higher  powers  and  capacities.  President  McCosh, 
in  his  chapter  on  the  correspondence  between  the  mental  and 
the  material  worlds,  has  traced  evidences  of  their  pre-established 
harmony  in  the  images  of  the  fancy,  the  conceptions  of  the 
understanding,  and  the  constructions  of  the  imagination  as 
together  conspiring  to  secure  the  welfare  of  man  and  the  glory 
of  the  Creator.  The  Rev.  Henry  Wace,  in  his  recent  Boyle 
lectures  on  "  Christianity  and  Morality,"  has  reinforced  the 
argument  from  conscience  for  a  personal  God,  moral  Creator, 
and  spiritual  Governor  of  the  world,  in  answer  to  the  doubts 
which  have  been  thrown   upon   such   reasoning.     It  is  not 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  in  Psychology.  365 

improbable  that  the  new  evolutionist  school  of  psychical 
science  may  yet  offer  fresh  theistic  proofs  of  an  absolute 
Mind  foreseeing  and  directing  the  development  of  thought 
as  well  as  of  force.  And  indeed  all  the  great,  comparative 
psychologists,  from  Leibnitz  to  Coleridge,  and  to  Lotze, 
have  never  failed  to  perceive  a  divine  wisdom  in  each  mental 
process  and  law,  as  well  as  in  those  high  accessional  per- 
fections of  the  human  spirit,  the  will,  consciousness  and 
reason,  which  surmount  mere  instinct,  sensation  and  life,  as 
Raphael  taught  in  paradise  : 

— flowers  and  their  fruit, 

Man's  nourishment,  by  gradual  scale  sublim'd, 

To  vital  spirits  aspire,  to  animal, 

To  intellectual ;  give  both  life  and  sense, 

Fancy  and  understanding.     Whence  the  soul 

Reason  receives,  and  reason  is  her  being, 

Discursive  or  intuitive. 

But  no  sooner  do  we  pass  beyond  the  empirical  psychology 
into  these  more  speculative  regions  than  we  find  the  crudest 
eclecticism  still  prevailing,  in  regard  to  such  questions  as  the 
origin  and  destiny  of  the  soul.  The  traditional  dogrnas  con- 
cerning the  creation  and  propagation  of  the  human  spirit  have 
simply  been  re-defined  on  new  psychological  principles.  Even 
the  doctrine  of  a  pre-existence  of  all  souls  in  God,  originally 
based,  by  Origen  and  Philo,  upon  the  Platonic  sentiment  of 
reminiscence  of  a  former  state,  and  since  renewed  by  Henry 
More,  has  appeared  in  the  schools  of  Kant,  Schelling  and 
Schubert,  who  endeavored  to  explain  the  origin  of  evil  by  a 
sort  of  previous  probation  and  metempsychosis.  The  younger 
Fichte  denies  that  the  divine  image  could  descend  by  genera- 
tion, from  father  to  son.  Julius  Miiller,  in  his  "  Christian  Doc- 
trine of  Sin,"  maintains  that  pre-existent  souls  for  a  former 
apostacy  have  been  imprisoned  in  human  bodies.  Dr.  Edward 
Beecher  published  a  treatise  entitled  the  "  Conflict  of  Ages," 
in  which  by  the  same  theory  he  essayed  to  settle  the  whole 
controversy  as  to  the  origin  of  evil  and  the  fall  of  man.  And 
Wordsworth,  in  his  noblest  poem,  "  The  Intimations  of  Im- 
mortality in  the  Recollections  of  Childhood,"  has  expressed 
the  doctrine  of  divine  emanation  and  reminiscence  in  lines 
which  will  endure  as  long  as  the  language : 


366  Eclecticism  in  Psychology.  [part  i. 

"Our  birth  is  but  a  sleep  and  a  forgetting: 
The  soul  that  rises  with  us,  our  life's  star, 
Hath  had  elsewhere  its  setting, 
And  conieth  from  afar. 
Not  in  entire  forgetfulness, 
And  not  in  utter  nakedness, 
But  trailing  clouds  of  glory  do  we  come 
From  God,  who  is  our  home." 

Creationism  also,  as  held  by  Lactantius  and  Aquinas  and 
re-defined  by  Calvin,  is  still  retained  on  the  basis  of  the  Carte- 
sian definition  of  the  soul  as  a  spiritual  substance  directly 
created  and  infused  in  the  human  organism  before  birth 
by  the  Father  of  Spirits  in  distinction  from  the  fathers  of  our 
flesh.  Dr.  Hodge,  agreeing  with  the  Augustinian  view, 
describes  such  a  creation  as  a  special  act  of  divine  power, 
mysterious,  yet  not  miraculous,  like  the  creation  of  physical 
life  in  a  seed  or  an  embryo;  and  holds  that  it  is  the  only  doc- 
trine consistent  with  the  immateriality  of  the  soul  and  the 
sinlessness  of  Christ.  The  Rev.  J.  B.  Heard,  in  his  "  Tripartite 
Nature  of  Man,"  whilst  admitting  that  the  body  and  the  soul 
are  propagated  under  natural  laws,  as  may  be  seen  in  the 
hereditary  genius  of  the  Sheridans,  Coleridges  and  Herschells, 
maintains  that  a  third  principle,  the  spirit,  pneuma  or  con- 
science, is  created,  regenerated  and  made  immortal  as  the  basis 
of  consciousness  in  the  intermediate  state  and  the  chief  attri- 
bute of  the  spiritual  body  in  the  resurection.  Dr.  Martensen, 
in  his  Dogmatic,  inclines  to  a  modified  creationism  which 
would  admit  the  immediate  action  of  God  as  to  the  produc- 
tion of  the  soul,  while  it  conserves  what  is  true  in  the  rival 
doctrine,  as  to  a  propagation  of  the  animal  life.  Giinther  and 
Lange  take  similar  views.  But  tlxe  most  pronounced  tradu- 
cianism  ofTertullian  and  Luther  is  likewise  finding  advocates 
as  a  rational  explanation,  not  only  of  the  doctrine  of  here- 
ditary depravity,  but  of  such  psychological  phenomena  as  the 
likeness  of  parent  and  child  in  soul  as  well  as  body,  and  the 
transmission  of  moral  and  intellectual  traits  no  less  than  phy- 
sical features.  Dclitzsch,  holding  to  a  sort  of  ideal  pre-exist- 
encc  of  all  souls  in  the  divine  mind  from  the  beginning, 
declares  that  any  new  creative  energy  at  their  birth  would  be 
inconsistent  with  the  rest  or  Sabbath  of  the  Creation  during 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  in  Psychology.  367 

this  age  of  the  world,  as  well  as  with  the  facts  of  psychology. 
Professor  Frohschammer,  of  Munich,  in  his  work  on  the 
"  Origin  of  the  Soul,"  defines  traducianism  as  a  secondary 
creation  by  the  creature,  and  terms  it  generationism.  And 
Dr.  Krauth,  in  his  "  Conservative  Reformation,"  with  remark- 
able clearness  and  precision  has  maintained  that  the  soul  is 
no  more  immediately  created  than  the  body,  that  the  one, 
as  the  other,  is  only  created  through  the  parents  as  the 
divinely  ordained  organ  of  its  production,  that  the  spiritual 
likeness  of  child  and  father  is  obvious  and  intimate,  and  that 
therein  is  mirrored  the  inscrutable  mystery  of  the  eternal 
generation  of  the  divine  Son  by  the  Absolute  Spirit.  There 
is,  however,  a  grosser  traducianism  which  seems  likely  to 
return  in  connection  with  the  new,  materialistic  speculations 
of  our  day,  somewhat  like  the  paradoxical  attempt  of  a 
forgotten  school  of  English  divines  in  the  last  century,  such 
as  Hills,  Woolner  and  Dodwell,  who  strove  to  base  the  notion 
of  a  material  origin  of  the  soul  in  Scripture  as  well  as  reason. 
Already  Mr.  Jonathan  Langstaff  Forster,  in  his.  "Biblical 
Psychology,"  has  maintained  that  the  existence  of  the  soul  as 
a  distinct  personal  entity  is  a  Platonic  rather  than  a  Scriptural 
doctrine,  and  the  mere  relic  of  a  heathen  psychology.  And 
such  views  have  even  been  associated  with  the  doctrine  con- 
cerning the  derivation  of  the  human  nature  of  Christ.  It  will 
not  be  surprising  if  the  latest  evolutionary  psychology  of 
Spencer,  Maudsley  and  Chauncey  Wright  shall  yet  find  some 
advanced  divines  to  champion  it  as  the  implicit  teaching  of 
Scripture. 

In  the  same  manner,  the  theory  of  the  will  or  doctrine  of 
human  conduct,  still  continues  a  fruitful  theme  of  devout 
speculation.  Every  dogmatic  system  of  divine  grace  turns 
upon  the  view  taken  of  the  active  powers  of  the  soul ;  and  the 
rival  schools  of  libertarianism  and  necessitarianism,  as  we  have 
seen,  have  yielded  corresponding  dogmas  concerning  predes- 
tination, regeneration  and  responsibility.  English  divines  of 
the  former  school,  such  as  Cudworth,  More  and  Howe  in 
their  controversies  with  Hobbes  and  Spinoza,  and  at  a  later 
period  Samuel  Clarke  and  Price  in  their  discussion  with  Leib- 
nitz and  Priestly,  consistently  with  the  hypothesis  of  free-will, 


3^8  Eclecticism  in  Psychology.  [part  i. 

maintained  that  human  actions  are  simply  foreknown,  not 
foreordained  by  God ;  that  the  soul  is  renewed  through  its 
own  agency ;  and  that  moral  accountability  is  measured  by 
ability  and  opportunity.  And  the  same  psychological  dog- 
mas have  since  been  re-defined  with  still  more  acuteness  by 
American  divines,  such  as  Whedon,  Taylor,  Beecher,  and 
Finney  who,  in  opposition  to  Edwards  and  the  Princeton  Es- 
sayists, have  held  that  the  divine  pre-ordination  is  contingent 
upon  human  free-will,  that  self-determination  and  full  ability 
are  essential  to  moral  agency,  and  that  regeneration  is  but  a 
change  of  purpose  or  a  moral  choice  between  good  and  evil. 
The  necessitarian  school  of  divines,  meanwhile,  from  their 
opposite  premises  have  been  inculcating  the  absolute  foreordi- 
nation  of  human  acts,  the  passivity  of  the  soul  in  regeneration, 
and  the  total  moral  inability  of  the  sinner  in  all  gracious 
works.  After  Arnold  Geulinx,  as  the  Calvinistic  expounder 
of  Descartes,  by  his  theory  of  occasional  causes,  had  reduced 
the  soul  to  a  mere  pre-determined  automaton,  and  after  Jona- 
than Edwards,  as  the  Calvinistic  critic  of  Collins,  had  effaced 
the  last  vestiges  of  its  self-determining  will,  it  only  remained 
for  a  school  of  American  Calvinists  to  push  such  necessita- 
rian doctrines  to  their  logical  extreme.  Dr.  Nathaniel 
Emmons,  as  if  to  blend  and  intensify  the  views  of  Geulinx  and 
Edwards,  maintained  that  the  Spirit  of  God,  so  far  from  im- 
planting any  new  principle,  faculty  or  disposition  in  the  soul, 
directly  creates  or  produces  the  entire  series  of  voluntary  acts 
and  holy  exercises  manifested  in  its  regeneration,  conversion 
and  sanctification.  Dr.  John  Smalley,  of  the  same  school, 
with  his  subtle  distinction  between  natural  and  moral  ability, 
ingeniously  argued  that,  though  man  is  naturally  qualified  to 
obey  the  will  of  God,  yet  he  is  morally  so  indisposed  as  to  be 
wholly  unable  to  think  and  do  right,  and  that  this  indisposition 
is  his  worst,  most  inexcusable  sin.  Dr.  Robert  Sandeman,  with 
fearless  consistency,  then  proceeded  to  the  legitimate  conclu- 
sion that  all  the  acts  of  unregenerate  men  are  an  abomination 
to  God,  and  that  the  very  exhortation  to  faith  and  repentance 
in  their  case  must  be  unwarranted  and  of  no  avail.  And  ever 
since,  as  the  fruit  of  such  teachings,  there  have  been  pious 
souls  tormented  with  the  dread  that  after  their  purest  and  best 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  in  Psychology.  369 

efforts,  they  were  but  reprobate  and  unpardonable  sinners  for 
whom  it  was  vain  to  pray. 

And  now,  scarcely  have  these  traditional  controversies  of 
theologians  begun  to  wane,  when  we  behold  the  same  pe- 
rennial battle  renewed  where  it  has  ever  originated,  on  the 
scientific  field  between  new  psychological  parties.  While 
Dr.  Maudsley,  in  his  treatise  on  "  Responsibility  in  Mental 
Disease,"  is  rhetorically  enforcing  necessitarianism  with  apt 
Scripture  texts  and  allusions,  and  Professor  Huxley  is  ironically 
supporting  his  human  automatism  with  the  orthodoxy  of 
Jonathan  Edwards,  we  find  Dr.  Elam,  with  his  "Winds  of 
Doctrine,"  assailing  such  opinions  as  mere  materialistic  fatal- 
ism, and  Dr.  Carpenter,  in  his  "  Mental  Physiolog>%"  denying 
that  the  self-determining  will  can  be  merged  in  mere  physi- 
cal causation,  that  uniform  laws  can  absolve  from  responsi- 
bility, and  the  moral  emotions  be  measured  with  muscular 
forces  or  molecular  movements.  And  it  will  be  strange 
indeed,  if  the  clerical  spectators  who  are  watching  this  pro- 
fessional duel,  shall  not  soon  take  sides  and  begin  to  proclaim 
some  fresh  Arminian  or  Calvinistic  triumph. 

At  the  same  time,  the  corresponding  ethical  schools  of 
utilitarianism  and  asceticism  are  still  contending  as  of  yore 
for  a  scriptural  foothold.  The  whole  doctrine  of  human  duty 
and  character  must  ever  be  pre-determined  by  psychological 
views  of  the  moral  faculty  or  quality,  and  though  such  views 
may  exist  independently  of  revelation,  yet  as  a  historical  fact, 
they  have  largely  had  their  root  or  their  flower  in  the  ethics 
of  the  Bible.  And  especially  since  the  Greek  and  Roman 
and  Gothic  virtues  became  blended  with  the  Christian,  have 
attempts  been  made  not  only  by  the  fathers,  schoolmen  and 
reformers,  but  also  later  divines,  such  as  Mosheim,  Butler, 
and  Edwards  to  connect  their  different  moral  systems  with 
the  Scriptures.  On  the  one  side,  the  Christian  asceticism 
which  would  make  virtue  or  holiness  the  sole  good,  as  vari- 
ously explained  by  More,  Cudworth  and  Clarke,  by  Schleier- 
macher,  De  Wette  and  Rothe,  has  been  renewed  by  Archibald 
Alexander,  Wayland  and  Haven.  On  the  other  side,  the 
Christian  utilitarianism  which  would  make  happiness  or  bless- 
edness the  sole  good,  as  advocated  in  different  forms  by 
2W 


370  Eclecticism  in  Psychology.  '      [part  i. 

Malebranchc,  Steinbart,  Paley  and  Edwards,  has  reappeared 
in  the  moral  theology  of  Hopkins,  Taylor  and  Finney.  And 
while  later  biblical  moralists,  such  as  Martensen,  Wutke  and 
Gregory  have  been  endeavoring  to  reconstruct  the  whole 
system  of  Christian  ethics  on  a  scriptural  basis,  the  purely 
scientific  moralists,  such  as  Grote,  Sedgwick  and  Sully,  are  ex- 
ploring anew  the  psychological  foundations  of  all  ethical  action. 
Indeed,  it  would  seem  that  those  foundations  themselves  are  to 
be  uptorn  and  rebuilt  from  new  as  well  as  old  materials.  In  a 
"Modern  Symposium"  reported  by  the  Nineteenth  Century 
Review,  it  has  been  openly  discussed  by  Sir  James  Stephen, 
Dr.  Martineau  and  Professors  Harrison  and  Clifford  on  the 
affirmative,  and  by  Lord  Selborne,  the  Duke  of  Argyll  and 
Dean  Stanley  on  the  negative,  Whether  morality  can  flourish 
independently  of  religion  and  the  Christian  virtues  remain 
after  a  decline  of  the  Christian  Faith.  It  is  but  the  old  ques- 
tion of  faith  and  works,  returning  under  a  scientific  guise; 
and  we  may  expect  to  see  the  controversy  extending  from  the 
outposts  to  the  very  citadel  of  Christian  ethics.  If  on  the  one 
side  some  new  disciples  of  Cudworth  are  ready  to  declare  that 
they  would  rather  be  condemned  to  the  place  of  the  lost  than 
admit  that  the  mere  will  of  God  must  be  essentially  right  and 
the  ground  of  all  moral  obligation,  we  need  not  wonder  to 
hear  from  the  other  side  some  new  Hopkinsian  advocate  of 
disinterested  benevolence,  declaring  it  the  height  of  Christian 
virtue  to  be  willing  to  suffer  eternal  perdition  for  the  glory  of 
God. 

But  the  destiny  of  the  soul,  even  more  than  its  origin  and 
conduct,  .still  engages  the  devout  fancy  of  speculative  divines. 
The  dogmas  of  immortality,  the  intermediate  state,  and  the 
final  resurrection  are  maintained  with  new  scientific  as  well  as 
scriptural  arguments,  and  as  philosophical  tenets  no  less  than  re- 
vealed truths.  On  the  one  side  stands  the  school  of  spiritual- 
istic immortalism  as  the  ancient  fortress  of  orthodoxy.  Henry 
More  and  Norris,  Bates  and  Baxter,  Whitby,  Stillingfleet  and 
Sherlock,  Clarke  and  Butler,  have  modern  successors  in  main- 
taining the  immediate  survival  of  the  soul  after  death,  as  a 
separate  spiritual  substance,  indissoluble  and  immortal,  con- 
scious and  active,  entranced  in  beatific  vision  or  writhing  in 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  in  Psychology.  371 

remorseful  torment.  Wolf  and  Meier  and  Crusius,  are  fol- 
lowed by  living  divines  in  associating  the  same  doctrme  with 
the  Leibnitzian  definition  of  the  soul  as  a  spiritual  monad, 
simple,  indestructible,  and  godlike,  and  in  defending  it  with 
moral  proofs  from  the  divine  attributes  and  the  analogy  of 
nature.  Devout  scientists,  such  as  Wagner,  in  his  treatise 
on  the  "  Future  Condition  of  Souls,"  and  Tait  and  Balfour, 
with  their  doctrine  of  the  Invisible  Universe,  are  seekmg  to 
identify  the  substance  of  the  soul  with  the  all-pervading  ether 
as  the  true  basis  and  guarantee  of  its  spirituality,  immortality, 
and  participation  in  things  unseen  and  eternal.  Leading  dog- 
matists also  have  been  reconstructing  or  reaffirming  their 
several  eschatologies  in  the  light  of  the  most  recent  mental 
and  moral  science.  Dr.  Hodge  has  maintained  that  the  full 
perfection  of  the  soul  in  holiness  at  death,  and  its  immediate 
entrance  into  a  glory  to  be  completed  in  the  resurrection,  are 
required  by  the  doctrines  of  probation,  justification  and 
redemption  as  well  as  by  the  implicit  psychology  of  the  Scrip- 
tures, which  assume  the  independent  subsistence,  consciousness 
and  activity  of  the  disembodied  spirit.  Dr.  James  Alexander, 
in  his  Consolatory  Discourses,  has  carefully  distinguished  the 
scriptural  sleep  of  the  dead  from  the  classic  conceit  of  an  obli- 
vious slumber,  by  maintaining  the  ceaseless  activity,  elasticity 
and  independence  of  the  mind,  and  by  showing  that  death, 
like  sleep,  is  but  a  detaching  of  the  soul  from  the  bonds  of 
sense,  and  a  resting  from  the  cares  and  labors  of  life,  during 
the  night  of  the  grave,  until  the  morning  of  the  resurrection, 
with  still  conscious  peace  and  joy.  And  it  might  be  added, 
that  in  that  ecstatic  slumber  of  the  saints,  their  spiritual  pow- 
ers may  be  only  liberated  and  expanded  (even  as  fancy  is 
often  busiest  in  the  natural  sleep),  but  under  such  rational  and 
moral  control  that,  instead  of  evolving  "the  stuff  that  dreams 
are  made  of,"  their  ideas  ever  correspond  to  pure  realities, 
their  images  are  of  things  unseen  and  eternal,  and  their  trance 
is  the  beatific  vision  of  heavenly  glories.  Many  practical 
and  consolatory  writers,  such  as  Lange,  in  his  "  Land  of 
Glory,"  Harbaugh,  in  his  works  on  the  "Sainted  Dead,"  the 
"Heavenly  Recognition,"  the  "  Heavenly  Home,"  and  Mac- 
donald,  in  his  treatise  entitled  "  My  Father's  House,"  have 


372  Eclecticism  in  Psychology.  [part  i, 

been  illustrating  anew  the  traditional  popular  doctrine  in  the 
blended  light  of  astronomy  and  psychology  and  with  all  the 
aids  of  history  and  literature. 

A  few  Anglican  divines,  belonging  to  the  conservative 
school,  have  been  inclined  to  admit,  on  ethical  as  well  as 
scriptural  and  ecclesiastical  grounds,  that  the  righteous  may 
still  improve  in  holiness  after  death,  and  the  wicked  find 
fresh  probation  in  the  middle  state  before  the  final  judgment. 
Dr.  Pusey,  in  an  Earnest  Remonstrance  against  the  Roman 
invention  of  purgatory,  argues  that  the  primitive  custom  of 
praying  for  apostles,  martyrs,  and  sainted  friends,  if  now 
intelligently  practised,  would  not  imply  any  unrest  or  suffering 
in  their  present  condition,  but  only  the  augmentation  and 
final  consummation  of  their  bliss,  both  in  body  and  soul,  at 
the  general  resurrection  in  the  last  day.  Keble,  in  one  of  his 
poems,  beautifully  describes  his  sainted  mother  as  receiving 
new  joy  from  the  knowledge  of  his  growth  in  piety,  but 
somehow  spared  the  sight  of  his  wretchedness  in  times  of 
passion  and  sin: 

"  Thou  turnest  not  thine  eyes  below, 
Or  clouds  of  glory  beam  between, 
Lest  earthly  pangs  of  fear  or  woe 
Upon  an  angel's  brow  be  seen." 

But  Cardinal  Wiseman,  in  his  Lecture  on  Purgatory,  softening 
somewhat  the  rigors  of  the  mediaeval  dogma,  maintains  from 
tradition  rather  than  Scripture,  that  souls  who  die  in  unfor- 
givcn  sin  must  be  purged  and  prepared  for  the  divine  glory 
through  the  pains  of  the  separate  state  and  at  length  saved  as 
by  fire  in  consequence  of  the  prayers,  alms,  penances  and 
masses  of  the  faithful  on  earth,  while  eminent  saints  and 
sinners  will  immediately  enter  heaven  and  hell  without  wait- 
ing for  the  final  judgment.  The  great  epics  of  Dante  and 
Milton,  based  upon  the  extremes  of  Catholic  and  Protestant 
doctrine,  have  been  worthily  supplemented  in  our  own  day  by 
the  Rev.  W.  W.  Lord,  whose  poem,  the  "  Christ  in  Hades," 
represents  the  intermediate  teaching  of  the  primitive  church 
and  the  early  English  divines,  and  depicts  the  under-world  of 
Paradise  with  a  sustained  grandeur  of  conception  and  style. 
At  the  same  time,  speculative  divines  of  the  German  ideal- 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  in  Psychology.  373 

istic  school,  such  as  Gosche  and  Weisse,  subhmating  the 
whole  Christian  doctrine  of  the  future  state  into  vague  esoteric 
abstractions,  would  consign  the  wicked  mass  literally  to  ever- 
lasting death  as  mere  refuse  of  the  Absolute  Reason,  while  a 
privileged  few  may  attain  to  eternal  life  through  their  partici- 
pation in  the  development  of  the  divine  consciousness  and  in 
the  immortality  of  the  human  race.  Against  such  vague  and 
unsweet  faith,  Tennyson  would  seem  to  have  uttered  the  pro- 
test of  all  united  souls,  who  seek 

"  Upon  the  last  and  sharpest  height, 
Before  the  spirits  fade  away, 
Some  landing-place,  to  clasp  and  sav : 
'  Farewell !   we  lose  ourselves  in  light ! '  " 

On  the  other  side,  however,  still  stands  the  school  of 
materialistic  mortalism,  sending  occasional  recruits  from  the 
very  camp  of  heterodoxy.  The  controversy  waged  in  all 
ages  of  the  Church,  whether  the  immortality  of  the  soul  can 
be  fully  proved  without  the  aid  of  revelation,  has  now  and 
then  driven  eccentric  divines  to  the  extreme  of  denying  that 
it  is  in  the  Bible  at  all,  and  displacing  it  as  a  mere  Platonic 
tradition  with  some  psychological  doctrine,  long  since  classed 
among  the  paradoxes  of  a  devout  fancy.  At  first  they  dis- 
tinguished between  the  mere  unconsciousness  and  the  absolute 
extinction  of  the  soul.  The  psycho-pannychists  of  the  Refor- 
mation, as  we  have  seen,  simply  recoiled  from  the  purgatory 
and  paradise  of  Romanism  toward  the  opposite  view  of  an 
unconscious  slumber  of  the  disembodied  spirit  during  the 
intermediate  state.  Luther,  though  certainly  not  a  materialist, 
was  inclined  to  believe  that  the  souls  of  the  just  sleep  till  the 
day  of  judgment,  as  he  declared  of  the  Elector  who  had  died 
on  returning  from  a  chase,  that  in  the  resurrection  it  would 
seem  to  him  as  if  he  had  just  come  from  the  forests  where  he 
had  been  hunting,  and  that  the  heavenly  recognition  of  the 
saints  would  be  like  that  of  Adam  and  Eve  on  his  awaking 
from  the  trance  during  which  she  had  been  formed  from  his 
side.  Tyndal,  the  martyred  translator  of  the  Bible,  in  contro- 
verting papal  error,  used  some  expressions  which  imply  the 
insensibility  as  well  as  disembodied  state  of  departed  souls, 
but  confessed  his  entire  ignorance  of  their   condition,  and 


374  Eclecticism  in  Psychology.  [part  I. 

emphasized  the  resurrection  and  second  coming  of  Christ  as 
more  important  and  hourly  impending  events.  Socinus  held 
that  the  separate  soul  was  rapt  in  mere  contemplative  self- 
consciousness,  without  any  sensation  or  perception  of  external 
reality.  Archbishop  Whateley,  in  his  "  Revelations  of  the 
Future  State,"  after  balancing  the  arguments  on  both  sides, 
favored  the  notion  of  an  unconscious  interval  between  death 
and  resurrection  as  more  in  accordance  with  the  Scriptural 
analogy  of  sleep,  and  practically  ensuring  an  instantaneous 
entrance  into  heaven.  Bishop  Butler  has  suggested  that  such 
a  temporary  suspension  of  reason,  memory  and  affection,  as 
we  know  from  sleep  or  a  swoon,  would  not  involve  their 
destruction.  And  Tennyson  has  also  sought  for  the  consola- 
tion of  future  recognition  in  the  same  conjecture: 

"  If  Sleep  and  Death  be  truly  one. 

And  every  spirit's  folded  bloom 

Through  all  its  intervital  gloom 

In  some  long  trance  should  slumber  on ; 

Unconscious  of  the  sliding  hour, 

Bare  of  the  body,  might  it  last, 

And  silent  traces  of  the  past 
Be  all  the  color  of  the  flower. 

And  love  would  last  as  pure  and  whole 

As  when  he  loved  me  here  in  time, 

And  at  the  spiritual  prime 
Rewaken  with  the  dawning  soul." 

It  was  beautifully  said  by  Chrysostom  that  the  early  Christians 
called  the  place  of  burial  a  cemetery  or  dormitory,  to  teach 
us  that  departed  souls  are  not  dead,  but  have  only  lain  down 
to  sleep.  And  Bryant,  in  his  Thanatopsis,  has  likened  the 
dying  saint  to  one 

"  Who  wraps  the  drapery  of  his  couch 
About  him,  and  lies  down  to  pleasant  dreams." 

But  a  few  extreme  divines,  abandoning  Plato  for  Aristotle, 
and  connecting  materialistic  arguments  with  unusual  interpre- 
tations of  Scripture,  have  gone  the  length  of  denying  the  ex- 
istence as  well  as  the  consciousness  of  the  disembodied  soul, 
on  the  ground  that  the  spirit  dies  with  the  body,  of  which  it 
is  but  a  function,  through  which  alone  it  can  be  exercised,  and 
with  which  therefore  it  must  be  revived  in  the  final  rcsurrec- 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  i)i  PsycJiology.  375 

tion.  The  classic  myth  of  Endymion,  who  for  craving  the 
boon  of  immortahty  was  condemned  to  perpetual  slumber  in 
the  cave  of  oblivion  on  Mt.  Latmus,  has  been  renewed  in  a 
Christian  form,  and  the  sleep  of  the  sainted  dead  converted 
into  a  dreamless  stupor  not  distinguishable  from  annihilation, 
M.  Charles  de  Remusat,  in  his  history  of  philosophy,  has 
recalled  various  forgotten  writers  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
who  endeavored  to  prove  that  the  whole  man  is  mortal,  that 
the  true  immortality  begins  at  the  resurrection,  and  that  there 
is  no  intermediate  paradise  or  purgatory,  heaven  or  hell,  before 
the  final  judgment.  Some  English  divines  of  the  last  century 
joined  the  materialists,  Coward,  Laytpn  and  Collins,  in  main- 
taining the  natural  mortality  of  the  soul  as  a  positive  tenet  of 
Scripture  no  less  than  a  truth  of  psychology.  Dr.  Henry 
Dodwell,  a  non-juring  churchman  deprived  of  his  chair  at 
Oxford,  published  several  works  in  which  he  labored  with 
great  learning  and  ingenuity  to  prove  from  the  Holy  Scrip- 
tures and  the  early  fathers,  that  the  soul  is  a  principle  natu- 
rally mortal,  but  immortalized  actually  by  the  pleasure  of  God, 
to  punishment  or  to  reward,  through  its  union  with  the  divine 
Spirit  in  baptism,  and  that  none  have  the  power  of  giving  this 
immortality  since  the  Apostles  but  only  the  Bishops.  Joseph 
Pitts  defended  the  position  of  Dodwell  in  various  treatises, 
maintaining  that  immortality  is  not  a  natural  ingredient  of 
spirit,  that  it  is  preternatural  to  human  souls  and  a  divine  gift 
of  the  Holy  Ghost,  secured  by  Christ,  who  hath  abolished 
death  and  brought  life  and  immortality  to  light.  At  a  later 
period  Priestly,  in  his  "  Disquisitions  on  Matter  and  Spirit/' 
not  only  held  the  sleep  of  the  whole  man  till  the  resurrection 
to  be  the  genuine  Christian  doctrine,  but  argued  that  it  made 
the  soul  as  much  dead  as  the  body,  and  was  only  another  and 
softer  name  for  the  same  thing.  While  such  writers  have  as- 
sociated mortalism  with  Unitarianism  and  Episcopacy,  it  has 
been  reserved  for  the  Rev.  John  Miller  to  revive  the  same 
opinion  in  an  able  treatise,  at  the  chief  seat  of  Presby- 
terian orthodoxy.  Even  the  Aristotelian  notion  of  the  Italian 
materialists  would  seem  to  have  re-appeared  in  some  recent 
German  divines,  who  hold  that  the  individual  soul,  being  in- 
separable from  the  bodily  organization,  must  vanish  into  the 


-i^y^i  Eclecticism  in  Psychology.  [part  i. 

universal  soul,  during  the  time  between  death  and  the  resur- 
rection, the  dust  returning  to  the  earth  as  it  was  and  the  spirit 
unto  God  who  gave  it.  It  will  only  repeat  the  cycle  of  former 
errors  if  Feuerbach  and  Biichner  should  yet  be  made  to  inter- 
pret David  and  St.  Paul.  Solomon  in  some  of  his  ironical 
passages  might  easily  be  cited  as  an  Epicurean.  Already 
Lucretius  and  Seneca  have  appeared  among  the  comforters  of 
Job,  preaching  a  stoical  faith  which  would  bid  the  mourner 
bury  his  heart  in  the  grave  at  which  he  weeps.  And  our 
whole  elegiac  literature  abounds  in  Pagan  emblems  which 
would  change  the  euthanasia  of  the  saint  into  a  Lethean  slum- 
ber, and  make  the  Christian  cemetery  a  literal  dormitory  of 
the  soul  as  well  as  the  body. 

While  mortalists  and  immortalists  differ  thus  widely  in  re- 
gard to  the  intermediate  state,  many  of  both  schools  are  prac- 
tically united  in  their  views  of  the  resurrection,  as  a  biblical 
doctrine  susceptible  of  scientific  support  and  illustration.  It 
is  maintained  that  the  notions  of  a  bodily  restoration  among 
the  Hindoos,  the  Egyptians  and  the  Persians,  are  traditions 
of  a  revealed  truth  which  is  prefigured  in  the  Old  Testament 
and  completed  in  the  New,  and  which  meets  a  universal  pre- 
sentiment expressed  in  the  sepulchral  rites  and  emblems  and 
monuments  of  all  nations.  And  attempts  are  made  to  render 
it  conceivable  and  probable  in  the  blended  light  of  physiology 
and  psychology.  Some  writers,  anticipating  a  resurrection  at 
the  moment  of  death,  seek  a  basis  for  it  in  the  present  consti- 
tution. Swedenborg  in  his  Celestial  Arcana,  Bonnet  in  his 
Palingenesia,  and  George  Bush  in  his  Anastasis,  have  main- 
tained that  there  is  a  spiritual  body  ensheathed  in  the  present 
material,  body,  and  liberated  in  the  very  process  of  dissolution 
with  an  unbroken  continuity  of  life,  but  with  a  new  organiza- 
tion resembling  the  old,  or  as  unlike  as  the  butterfly  is  unlike 
the  worm.  Isaac  Taylor,  in  his  Physical  Theory  of  An- 
other Life,  pursuing  some  conjectures  of  Butler,  has  ingeni- 
ously argued  that  in  man  as  the  chief  terrestrial  animal  may 
be  discerned  the  prophetic  instincts  and  latent  types  of  an  ex- 
pected metamorphosis  as  plainly  as  in  the  structure  and  habits 
of  an  insect  preparing  to  pass  into  the  chrysalis  st^te;  that  at 
death  by  a  transition  as  natural  as  birth  his  rational  and  moral 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  in  Psychology.  377 

consciousness  will  at  once  expand  into  a  new,  refined  corpo- 
reity, affording  larger  scope  for  those  intense  emotions  which 
are  now  repressed  by  the  limited  capacity  of  the  nervous  s}'s- 
tem;  and  that  at  length  he  will  obtain  that  full  measure  of  phy- 
sical energy  and  expression  which  will  enable  him  to  sustain 
the  otherwise  overpowering  impressions  of  the  beatific  vision. 
Julius  Miiller  holds  that,  though  the  spirit  lives,  its  organizing 
principle  remains  dormant  between  death  and  resurrection, 
until  it  shall  be  clothed  with  its  house  from  heaven.  But 
Lange,  in  his  "  Doctrine  of  the  Last  Things,"  would  seem  to 
advocate  a  sort  of  continuous  or  successive  incarnation  of  the 
soul  by  virtue  of  a  plastic  or  formative  force  which  impels  it 
to  incorporate  itself  suitably  in  all  circumstances,  as  a  seed 
assimilates  and  vitalizes  surrounding  matter,  enabling  it  at 
birth  to  fashion  for  itself  the  present  organism,  then  after  death 
to  assume  some  more  ethereal  vehicle,  and  at  length,  in  the 
great  palingenesia,  to  clothe  itself  in  the  most  glorious  form 
which  the  universe  can  afford,  some  refined  radiant  structure, 
which  shall  be  freed  from  all  earthly  vileness,  and  in  which 
the  righteous  shall  shine  as  the  stars  forever. 

The  most  varied  conjectures  have  also  prevailed  as  to  the 
sameness  of  the  future  with  the  present  body.  The  older  and 
more  general  opinion  is,  that  the  whole  or  a  part  of  the  very 
same  matter  or  substance  will  be  revived.  The  fathers 
seem  to  have  looked  for  a  literal  resuscitation  of  the  entire 
body  with  all  its  bones,  flesh  and  blood,  as  deposited  in 
the  grave.  The  schoolmen,  with  more  moderation,  taught 
that  only  the  body  in  the  maturity  of  its  vigor  and  beauty  will 
be  raised.  The  rabbins  fancied  a  rudiment  of  the  resurrection 
at  the  extremity  of  what  is  known  to  anatomists  as  the  sacred 
bone,  and  its  contact  in  the  grave  with  some  portion  of  the 
holy  soil  of  Palestine  is  still  supposed  to  be  necessary  to 
secure  its  future  germination  and  prevent  a  subterranean  mi- 
gration to  the  Holy  Land.  The  Rev.  Samuel  Drew,  in  his 
treatise  on  the  identity  of  the  resurrection  body,  has  revived 
this  conceit  m  a  more  refined  form  by  maintaining  that  there 
is  in  every  human  organism  an  indestructible  germ  which,  as 
the  flower  from  the  seed,  shall  ripen  thousands  of  years  after 
it  has  been  sown  in  the  ground.  Bishop  Butler  has  hinted 
2X 


378  Eclecticism  in  Psychology.  [part  i. 

that  from  all  we  know  of  the  present  body  and  of  the  ulti- 
mate constitution  of  matter,  the  merest  infinitesimal  atom 
might  afford  the  sufficient  nucleus  of  a  new  organization. 
But  the  popular  conception  of  the  general  resurrection  is 
probably  that  depicted  by  the  poet  Young : 

"  Now  charnels  rattle ;  scattered  limbs  and  all 
The  various  bones,  obsequious  to  the  call, 
Self- moved  advance, — the  neck  perhaps  to  meet 
The  distant  head;  the  distant  head,  the  feet." 

Another  opinion  is,  that  the  organization  only  may  be  the 
same,  even  though  the  substance  or  matter  should  be  wholly 
different.  It  has  been  shown  by  psychologists  and  physiolo- 
gists that  personal  identity  is  maintained  in  the  present  body 
whilst  its  existing  particles  are  constantly  replaced  by  other 
particles  every  seven,  ten,  or  twenty  years.  President  Hitch- 
cock therefore  suggests  that  it  Is  not  necessary  to  assume  a 
single  restored  particle  in  the  resurrection  body,  but  only 
similar  particles  united,  so  as  to  assume  the  same  structure 
and  form.  And  if  the  soul  itself,  as  many  have  fancied,  be 
endowed  with  plastic  as  well  as  percipient  powers,  by  which  it 
unconsciously  moulds  and  sustains  the  whole  organism,  then 
it  may  hereafter,  at  the  signal  of  the  resurrection,  appropriate 
and  vitalize  entirely  new  matter  in  a  body  exactly  like  that 
which  it  long  ago  shed  and  lost  in  the  grave.  But  still 
another  and  yet  more  subtle  opinion  is,  that  the  identity  may 
be  neither  substantial,  nor  organic,  but  simply  ideal,  like  that 
which  belongs  to  a  work  of  art.  The  Apollo  Belvidere  would 
be  in  this  sense  the  same,  though  wrought  in  other  marble. 
The  rainbow  is  the  same  in  the  driving  shower.  And  the 
identification  of  the  human  body  is  secured  simply  through 
its  expression  of  the  same  character,  so  that  shrewd  observers 
can  discern  not  merely  personal  and  family  traits,  but  national 
and  even  provincial  ideas.  We  assure  ourselves  of  the 
individuality  which  it  reveals  without  any  recondite  regard  to 
its  material  particles  or  its  mode  of  organic  life.  The  poet 
Shelley  thus  depicts  the  soul  of  sleeping  lanthc  as  it  stood, 

All  beautiful  in  naked  purity, 
The  perfect  semblance  of  its  bodily  frame, 
Instinct  with  inexpressible  beauty  and  grace  ; 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  in  Psychology.  379 

while  the  body  lay  upon  the  couch,  with  the  animal  life 
perfect,  and  every  organ  performing  its  natural  functions.  Dr. 
Hodge  has  suggested  that  if  the  soul  now  have  so  much 
power  to  illuminate  and  render  intelligible  the  gross  material 
of  the  body,  it  may  hereafter  make  its  ethereal  vestment  so 
expressive  of  itself,  that  we  shall  at  once  recognize  Isaiah, 
Paul  and  John.  And  if  the  conjecture  of  Lange  be  added,  it 
might  still  retain  its  identity,  though  it  were  endowed  with  an 
unlimited  capacity  for  organizing  and  expressing  itself  in 
material  forms,  and  should  acquire  other  physical  perceptions 
and  powers,  as  unlike  those  of  this  vile  body,  this  muddy 
vesture  of  decay,  as  is  the  beautiful  insect  unlike  the  unsightly 
chrysalis  out  of  which  it  struggled  up  into  a  new  sphere,  with 
new  organs  and  a  new  life. 

The  psychical  miracles  of  Scripture  have  also  been  sub- 
jected to  the  same  eclectic  treatment.  It  has  been  claimed 
that  the  gifts  of  inspiration,  of  prophecy,  and  of  tongues  were 
genuine  manifestations  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  which  have  recurred 
in  the  Church  at  different  times,  as  lately  among  the  Irvirigites, 
and  may  even  be  corroborated  by  analogous  phenomena  of 
Satanic  origin  in  the  secular  sphere.  Volumes  have  been 
written  to  prove  that  the  demoniacs  in  the  Gospels  were  not 
only  genuine  possessions  of  evil  spirits,  but  have  ever  since 
been  paralleled  by  cases  of  witchcraft  and  sorcery,  requiring 
forms  of  exorcism  and  torture.  Dr.  Carpenter,  in  a  recent 
review  of  mesmerism,  clairvoyance,  spirit-rapping,  etc.,  has 
incisively  remarked  that  we  are  now  asked  to  believe  greater 
psychical  miracles  in  the  name  of  science,  than  have  hitherto 
been  claimed  in  the  name  of  religion.  Isaac  Taylor  has  pro- 
foundly hinted  that  frequent  communion  with  departed  spirits 
may  be  hindered  not  only  by  their  lack  of  our  modes  of  com- 
munication, but  by  our  inadequate  nervous  capacity  to  long 
sustain  their  spiritual  influences  and  impressions.  And  in 
spite  of  all  the  superstitious  angel-worship  of  past  ages  and 
the  vulgar  necromancy  of  the  present  day,  there  are  those  who 
can  still  believe  with  St.  Paul  in  a  permitted  ministry  of  angels 
and  sainted  friends. 


380  Eclecticism  in  Sociology.  [part  i. 

Eclecticism  in  Sociology. 

The  scientific  sociology  may  be  said  to  have  been  hitherto 
held  by  a  rehgious  eclecticism  with  almost  undisputed  sway. 
Political  economy,  civil  government,  and  philosophical  history, 
until  fully  matured,  were  simply  treated  as  ecclesiastical  topics. 
And  ever  since  they  became  independent,  devout  statesmen, 
as  well  as  intelligent  churchmen,  have  continued  to  find  their 
respective  systems  of  polity  precisely  delineated  in  Holy  Scrip- 
ture as  at  once  the  models  of  divine  wisdom  and  the  ideals  of 
social  science.  A  papal,  prelatical,  or  presbyterial  theocracy 
has  been  discerned  by  Bellarmin,  Laud  and  Calderwood,  in 
the  Jewish  and  Christian  Church ;  an  absolute  monarchy,  by 
Bossuet  and  Filmer,  in  the  anointed  kings  of  Judah,  from 
David  to  the  Messiah  ;  a  legitimate  aristocracy  by  Southern 
divines,  in  the  patriarchal  institution  of  domestic  slavery ; 
and  a  foreordained  democracy,  by  Northern  preachers,  in  the 
exodus  of  the  pilgrim  fathers  from  European  bondage,  the  ex- 
pulsion of  the  Canaanitish  aborigines,  and  the  establishment 
of  the  thirteen  colonies,  like  the  ancient  tribes  of  Israel,  under 
a  model  government,  with  a  mighty  and  outstretched  arm  in 
the  view  of  all  nations.  And  at  the  same  time,  Christian 
economists  and  philanthropists,  such  as  Grotius  and  Malthus, 
have  been  seeking  proofs  of  the  divine  wisdom  and  goodness 
in  a  supposed  natural  constitution  of  society  which  would 
simply  perpetuate  war,  caste,  poverty,  ignorance  and  crime,  as 
chronic  and  remediless  evils  of  human  nature. 

The  true  theistic  argument  of  the  social  sciences  is  begin- 
ning to  embrace  as  its  field  the  whole  history  as  well  as  or- 
ganism of  humanity.  The  way  may  be  said  to  have  been 
opened  by  such  historians  as  Bossuet  and  Prideaux,  who 
have  discerned  a  universal  Providence  of  mingled  justice  and 
mercy  in  the  fortunes  of  nations  as  well  as  individuals,  and  by 
such  political  dreamers  as  Thomas  More  and  Campanella, 
who  have  projected  ideal  commonwealths  which  would  realize 
the  Communism  of  the  Apostles  and  the  predicted  kingdom 
of  the  Messiah.  Butler,  in  his  chapter  on  the  Moral  Govern- 
ment of  God,  has  traced  its  deep  and  broad  foundations  in  the 
natural  rewards  of  prudence  and  rashness,  of  beneficial  and 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclcctidsm  in  Soclclogy.  381 

mischievous  actions,  and  of  virtue  and  vice  as  such,  as  well  as 
in  the  inherent  tendency  of  the  virtuous  class  to  predominate 
over  the  vicious  in  an  ideal  society  which  may  exist  elsewhere 
in  the  universe,  which  was  actually  promised  to  the  Jew  and 
the  Christian,  and  is  yet  to  be  fully  realized  in  the  progress  of 
mankind.  Chalmers,  in  his  Bridgewater  Treatise,  has  con- 
tinued the  argument  of  Butler,  by  explaining  the  social  affec- 
tions which  secure  the  civil,  political  and  economic  well-being, 
such  as  the  ties  of  kindred,  friendship  and  patriotism,  the  rights 
of  property,  the  humane  instincts  of  charity  and  philanthropy, 
and  by  recounting  the  public  blessings  which  ever  attend  the 
prevalence  of  virtue,  and  if  fully  developed  would  convert  the 
world  into  an  elysium.  President  McCosh,  in  his  "  Method 
of  the  Divine  Government,  Physical  and  Moral,"  a  work  worthy 
to  be  classed  with  the  former,  has  proceeded  to  illustrate  the 
divine  holiness  and  justice  as  well  as  wisdom  and  goodness, 
the  moral  no  less  than  the  natural  attributes,  in  the  laws  and 
penalties  of  Providence,  ift  the  crimes  and  miseries  of  humanity, 
and  in  the  vindication  of  the  former  and  restoration  of  the  lat- 
ter through  the  revealed  scheme  of  redemption.  It  was  one 
of  the  prescient  hints  of  Bishop  Butler  that  the  whole  historical 
evolution  of  the  Christian  system  from  the  beginning  of  the 
world  has  proceeded  under  general  laws  in  analogy  with  the 
secular  processes  of  nature  ;  and  a  new  class  of  theistic  proofs 
may  yet  be  gathered,  as  we  see  the  mineral,  vegetal  and  ani- 
mal economies  of  divine  wisdom  and  goodness  through  the 
geological  ages  gradually  surmounted  through  the  four  great 
historical  eras,  from  the  Fall  to  the  Flood,  to  the  Incarnation, 
to  the  Second  Advent,  by  successive  spiritual  economies  of 
divine  justice,  forbearance,  mercy  and  love,  in  one  vast  scheme 
of  social  as  well  as  individual  regeneration. 

The  more  speculative  realms  of  the  science  have  been  like- 
wise claimed  as  by  right  of  discovery  rather  than  of  conquest. 
Each  of  the  rival  opinions  as  to  the  origin  and  destiny  of 
society  has  been  made  to  do  religious  homage  and  service. 
On  the  one  side  the  strictest  legitimism  has  been  retained  by 
such  faithful  adherents  of  the  papacy  as  Father  Newman  and 
Cardinal  Manning,  who  maintain  the  temporal  independence  or 
supremacy  of  the  Roman  Pontiff  as  essential  to  his  spiritual  pre- 


382  Eclecticism  in  Sociology.  [part  i. 

rogatives,  and  accept  his  decrees  as  but  the  historical  and  logi- 
cal outgrowth  of  an  infallible  hierarchy;  by  such  zealous 
churchmen  as  Palmer  and  Dr.  Samuel  Miller,  who  have  held 
the  divine  right  of  bishops  or  of  presbyters  to  be  in  accordance 
with  apostolic  teachmg  and  example,  as  well  as  with  the  prin- 
ciples of  Christian  society;  and  by  loyal  followers  of  exiled 
monarchs,  who  imagine  them  sovereigns  by  the  grace  of  God 
and  the  will  of  the  people,  no  less  than  guarantees  of  order 
and  virtue. 

The  exclusively  Providential  view  of  the  whole  human  de- 
velopment has  been  carried  to  a  climax  by  the  Rev.  James 
Smith  in  a  "Divine  Drama  of  History,"  of  which  the  classical 
five-fold  play  is  to  be  taken  as  the  analogue,  and  for  which 
physical  geography  furnishes  the  stage  and  scenery,  chrono- 
logy the  successive  acts,  and  nations  and  civilizations  the  per- 
forming personages,  while  the  vast  plot  of  the  world's  re- 
demption is  being  unfolded.  The  Chevalier  Bunsen  has  more 
philosophically,  if  not  pantheistically,  advocated  the  same 
conception  in  his  treatise  "God  in  Histor}^,"  by  tracing  the 
religious  consciousness  of  mankind  through  the  Hebrew, 
Greek,  and  Germanic  epochs  of  religion,  science  and  specula- 
tion, according  to  the  law  of  divine  self-manifestation  in 
humanity. 

The  doctrine  of  supernatural  economies  in  universal  history 
also  has  been  advocated  by  the  Italian  statesman,  Caesar 
Balbo,  who  held  that  mankind  after  showing  a  progressive 
degeneration  before  the  advent  of  Christ,  has  since  shown  a 
progressive  amelioration  through  the  influence  of  the  Roman 
Church;  by  the  German  philosopher,  Schlegel,  who  sought 
to  trace  a  gradual  restoration  of  the  divine  image  in  the  race 
as  well  as  in  the  individual,  by  means  of  the  Jewish  and 
Christian  dispensations  ;  and  by  the  Spanish  theologian, 
Balmez,  who,  in  opposition  to  Guizot,  aimed  to  vindicate  the 
highest  European  civilization  as  but  the  legitimate  fruit  of 
Catholicity.  And  the  natural  corruptibility  of  society  has 
been  assumed  by  the  reactionary  school  of  De  Bonald  and 
De  Maistre,  who  taught  a  uniform  decadence  of  all  nations 
with  all  their  interests,  as  illustrated  by  the  French  revolution ; 
whilst  the   Italian  philosopher   Rosmini,  argued   that  social 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  in  Sociology.  383 

masses  everywhere  tend  to  a  progressive  corruption,  which 
can  only  be  repaired  by  barbaric  new  blood  or  arrested  by 
favored  individuals,  such  as  the  Roman  Csesars,  or  by  intel- 
lectual and  religious  castes,  such  as  the  Indian  Brahmins,  the 
Chinese  mandarins,  and  pre-eminently,  the  Catholic  clergy. 
At  the  same  time,  the  extreme  millennarians  have  simply 
abandoned  all  civilization  to  a  coming  destruction  in  hope  of 
the  miraculous  return  and  reign  of  Christ  as  King  of  the 
nations. 

On  the  other  side,  the  revolutionary  principles  of  the  Re- 
formation have  been  re-affirmed  by  such  enlightened  church- 
men and  statesmen  as  Dollinger  and  Gladstone,  who  resist 
the  political  and  religious  supremacy  of  the  Roman  Pontiff  as 
inconsistent  both  with  the  civil  and  with  the  ecclesiastical 
polity;  by  dissenting  divines,  who  have  denounced  the  claims 
of  prelacy  or  presbytery  as  not  less  repugnant  to  Christian 
than  to  natural  society,  and  at  variance  with  the  primitive 
Church  as  well  as  with  the  modern  State;  and  by  devout  pa- 
triots who  have  argued  that  resistance  to  tyrants  is  obedience 
to  God.  The  theory  of  human  progression  has  been  based 
upon  scriptural  as  well  as  scientific  principles  by  the  French 
publicist  Buchez,  who  seeks  to  unfold  the  successive  econo- 
mies of  the  Old  and  New  Testament  in  accordance  with 
logical  and  social  laws ;  by  the  Scottish  divine,  Patrick  Dove, 
who  maintains  that  the  predicted  triumph  of  virtue  and  reli- 
gion is  involved  in  the  natural  progress  of  the  moral  sciences; 
and  by  the  German  philosopher  Lotze,  who  enunciates  the 
laws  of  the  whole  social  development  as  proceeding  in  accord- 
ance with  the  divine  sovereignty  and  human  freedom.  And 
the  perfectibility  of  Christian  society  has  been  assumed  by 
the  advanced  school  of  Coleridge,  Arnold,  Sewall  and  Rothe, 
who  have  looked  forward  to  the  ultimate  fusion  of  Church 
and  State  in  a  perfected  republic  of  piety  and  virtue;  whilst 
the  numerous  sects  of  Christian  socialists,  in  the  heart  of 
modern  civilization,  have  dreamed  of  restoring  the  com- 
munism of  the  disciples  at  Pentecost. 

The  great  miracles  wrought  in  the  social  sphere  through  all 
the  biblical  history,  have  also  been  scientifically  defended  and 
verified.     That  good  and  evil  angels  have  mingled  in  human 


384  Eclecticism  in  Sociology.  [part  I. 

affairs  is  claimed  by  such  writers  as  Chalmers,  Isaac  Taylor, 
and  Kurtz  as  a  supernatural  fact  which  may  be  discerned  in 
the  whole  career  of  humanity,  the  very  aspects  of  civilization 
and  the  prospects  of  Christianity.  It  is  argued  that  the  'first 
temptation  by  Satan  in  Paradise  and  the  subsequent  struggle 
between  the  seed  of  the  serpent  and  the  seed  of  the  woman, 
have  left  their  traces  in  all  ancient  and  modern  heathenism, 
whose  startling  resemblances  to  Judaism  and  Christianity  are 
but  infernal  caricatures  and  diabolical  perversions  of  the  reli- 
gious instincts  of  a  fallen  race,  and  whose  abominable  idolatries 
and  cruelties  form  the  fit  rites  of  the  prince  of  the  powers  of 
darkness.  The  temptation  of  Christ  and  the  numerous  cases  of 
demoniacal  possession  at  the  time  of  His  mission,  marked  that 
crisis  in  the  great  struggle  when  Satan  mustered  his  legions  as  if 
for  a  desperate  encounter.  And  the  moral  conflicts  that  followed 
between  Christianity  and  Paganism  were  but  the  continued 
warfare  of  the  children  of  light  with  the  rulers  of  the  darkness 
of  this  world.  The  holy  angels,  meanwhile,  have  ever  been- 
desiring  to  look  into  the  mysteries  of  human  redemption, 
welcoming  each  new-born  soul  as  one  of  its  trophies,  and  may 
still  be  fancied  as  the  majestic  spectators  of  a  great  historical 
drama  arranged  from  the  beginning  of  creation,  to  the  intent 
that  now  unto  principalities  in  heavenly  places  might  be  made 
known  by  the  Church  the  manifold  wisdom  of  God.  And  if 
to  such  consistent  revelations  be  added  a  recent  psychical  con- 
jecture, that  the  planet  as  it  grows  from  its  geological  through 
its  historic  eras,  becomes  insphered  and  haloed  with  ethere- 
alized  souls,  the  good  and  great  of  all  time,  whose  blood  and 
thought  yet  live  on  in  ours ; 

"  The  dead,  but  sceptr'd  sovereigns  of  the  world, 
Whose  spirits  still  rule  us  from  their  urns ;  " 

these,  too,  may  be  added  to  the  ranks  of  solemn  lookers-on, 
that  increase  from  age  to  age  as  man  increases  in  knowledge, 
virtue  and  power,  until  at  length  the  earth  will  but  ripen  into 
its  full  miraculous  bloom  in  the  heavens,  when  the  Son  of 
iVIan  shall  come  again  with  the  glory  of  the  Father  and  the 
holy  angels. 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  in  Theology.  385 


Eclecticism  in  Theology. 

The  scientific  theology  has  also  long  been  claimed  by  the 
religious  eclectic  as  his  own  original  domain.  P^rom  the  be- 
ginning, since  the  time  of  Justin  Martyr,  the  natural  theism 
and  ethics  found  in  Greek  and  Roman  philosophy  and  the 
semblances  of  Scripture  doctrine  discerned  in  ancient  and  mo- 
dern mythology,  have  ever  been  held  to  be  the  mere  relics  or 
germs  or  imitations  of  Christianity,  and  are  still  so  treated  by 
Hardwicke,  Liicke  and  Moffat.  The  natural  religion  reasoned 
out  by  the  deist  and  the  physical  theology  unfolded  by  the 
theist  have  been  steadily  incorporated  in  the  systems  of  apo- 
logists as  foundations  of  the  Christian  faith,  by  Tulloch,  Pea- 
body,  Wharton,  Chadbourne,  Thompson,  Pirie,  Macmillan, 
Lord.  The  metaphysical  theology  of  the  schools,  with 
its  ontological,  cosmological,  and  psychological  proofs  of  a 
God  have  been  included  among  the  armaments  that  begirt  the 
citadel  of  revealed  truth,  by  such  writers  as  Buchanan,  Hickok, 
Mahan.  Even  the  new  comparative  theology  or-  science 
of  religions  which  at  first  appeared  with  an  offensive  bearing 
has  been  converted  into  a  defensive  argument  by  a  historical 
school  of  divines  who  maintain  there  is  a  special  revelation  for 
Christianity  in  distinction  from  one  that  is  universal  in  other 
religions.  All  that  is  established  and  accepted  in  each  depart- 
ment of  the  purely  scientific  theology  has  thus  been  captured 
and  held  for  the  benefit  and  glory  of  the  Christian  religion. 

At  the  same  time,  the  different  hypotheses  as  to  the  origin, 
development  and  destiny  of  religion  as  a  universal  phenomenon 
of  human  nature,  have  been  pressed  into  more  or  less  close 
connection  with  the  history  of  Christianity,  Professor  George 
B.  Fisher,  in  his  able  and  learned  "  Essays  on  the  Supernatural 
Origin  of  Christianity,"  has  maintained  that  the  mythical  theory 
of  Strauss  and  Baur  is  incompatible  with  the  veracity  of  Christ 
and  the  Apostles,  with  the  canonical  authority  of  the  Scriptures, 
with  the  known  character  of  the  time  in  which  they  appeared, 
with  the  nature  of  the  mythopoeic  faculty  as  shown  in  con- 
temporaneous antiquity,  and  with  all  the  historical  evidence 
which  has  been  accumulating  around  the  literal  truth  of  the 
evangelical  narrative.  On  the  other  side,  the  author  of  the 
2Y 


386  Eclecticism  in  Theology.  [part  I, 

recent  work  on  "  Supernatural  Religion  "  has  been  simply  re- 
newing the  destructive  methods  of  the  German  criticism  in 
regard  to  the  genuineness  and  canonicity  of  the  gospels. 
The  Rev,  John  P.  Lundy,  in  his  elaborate  and  elegant  treatise 
on  "  Monumental  Christianity "  by  an  interpretation  of  the 
artistic  symbols  of  all  religions,  has  traced  their  unity  to  a  pri- 
mitive revelation,  perverted  in  Paganism,  developed  in  Judaism, 
and  matured  in  the  articles  of  the  Apostles'  Creed,  which  he 
finds  successively  displayed  in  the  paintings,  sculptures,  tombs, 
personal  ornaments,  and  other  monuments  of  the  Christian 
Church.  On  the  other  side.  Lord  Amberley,  in  his  "Analysis 
of  Religious  Belief,"  has  discerned  in  all  religions,  as  their 
most  essential  truth  and  principle  of  unity,  the  universal  recog- 
nition of  some  mysterious  unknown  Cause  or  Power  in  the 
universe  which  they  have  variously  symbolized  and  personified. 
President  Woolsey,  in  his  "  Religion  of  the  Future,"  has  vindi- 
cated the  supremacy  of  Christianity  and  its  capacity  to  survive 
and  finally  triumph  over  all  other  religions.  On  the  other 
side,  Mr.  Samuel  Johnson,  in  his  recent  work  on  "  Universal 
Religion,"  is  arguing  for  a  gradual  coalescence  and  subsidence 
of  Christianity  with  Heathenism  in  some  future  catholic  faith 
of  humanity.  Each  of  the  hypotheses  which  we  have  described 
is  every  day  marshalling  new  followers,  who  advocate  from 
different  points  a  fusion  between  Christianity  and  other  reli- 
gions. 

And  finally,  the  whole  speculative  theology  or  scientific 
cosmology  has  been  seized  and  wrought  into  the  very  bastions 
of  the  citadel  of  revealed  religion.  Both  phases  of  metaphy- 
sical thought  concerning  the  origin,  development  and  destiny 
of  the  world,  have  been  blended  with  the  theism  of  Scripture. 
Monism,  as  a  sort  of  Christian  pantheism,  has  a  representative 
in  Mr.  J.  Allanson  Picton,  whose  "  Mystery  of  Matter  "  repre- 
sents the  universe  as  a  phenomenal  manifestation  of  the  Infi- 
nite Life  or  Energy  with  which  the  essential  God  of  the  Chris- 
tian is  substantially  identical.  Dualism  is  still  represented  by 
Prof.  B.  F.  Cocker,  in  whose  "  Theistic  Conception  of  the 
World  "  the  Absolute  First  Cause  is  neither  the  original  mat- 
ter of  Biichner,  nor  the  persistent  force  of  Spencer,  nor  the 
absolute  thought  or  reason  of  Hegel,  but  an  unconditioned  Will 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclecticism  in  Theology.  387 

or  living  Person,  from  whom,  to  whom,  and  in  whom  are  all 
thmgs.  Professor  Martineau,  in  spite  of  the  charge  of  anthro- 
pomorphism, has  eloquently  shown,  in  his  essays  on  "  Religion 
and  Materialism,"  that  the  existence  of  a  Universal  Will  is  the 
ultimate  fact  of  metaphysical  speculation  reached  alike  by  La 
Place,  Herschel  and  Shopenhauer;  that  as  La  Place  could 
find  no  God  in  the  heavens  with  his  telescope,  and  Lawrence 
no  soul  in  the  brain  with  his  scalpel,  so  Du  Bois  Reymond 
would  imagine  that  a  Universal  Mind  must  be  organized  in  a 
monstrous  cerebrum  or  divine  brain  of  the  universe ;  but  that 
Ampere  has  proved  that  there  are  constellations  of  molecules 
corresponding  to  those  of  worlds,  and  therefore  the  ordered 
heavens  may  repeat  the  rhythm  of  the  cerebral  particles.  Cre- 
ationism  has  found  advocates  in  Murphy  of  Dublin,  who  seems 
to  have  revived  the  plastic  mind  of  Cudworth  under  the  name 
of  unconscious  intelligence  and  habit  in  man  and  nature ; 
Frohschammer  of  Munich,  who  has  united  Cudworth  with 
Hegel  by  maintaining  that  the  creative  energy,  the  funda- 
mental principle  of  the  cosmic  process  is  not  will  or  reason 
alone,  but  imagination  as  a  teleological  plastic  force  regulating 
the  objective  development  of  the  absolute ;  and  Kaulich  of 
Prague,  in  whose  system  of  metaphysics  the  absolute  Creator 
is  made  ever  immanent  in  His  creation,  as  seen  in  the  teleolo- 
gical evolution  of  life  and  of  mind,  in  the  miraculous  concep- 
tion of  Christ  by  parthenogenesis,  and  in  the  reunion  of  nature 
and  spirit  by  the  resurrection  as  the  full  realization  of  the  ideal 
humanity.  The  strictest  evolutionism  of  Herbert  Spencer 
has  found  a  champion  in  the  Rev.  William  I.  Gill,  whose  vigo- 
rous exposition  and  defense  of  that  hypothesis  against  both  its 
advocates  and  opponents,  is  designed  to  clear  the  way  for  the 
theistic  theory  of  the  universe  which  will  comprise  evolution 
itself  as  a  vast  temple  comprises  each  of  its  miniature  figures. 
Both  pessimism  and  optimism,  according  to  Dr.  Martensen,  in 
his  "  Christian  Ethics,"  have  a  foundation  in  revealed  religion  ; 
the  former,  in  the  doctrine  of  depravity  and  lost  paradise,  and 
the  latter,  in  that  of  redemption  and  paradise  regained.  Herr 
Philip  Mainlander,  in  his  "  Philosophy  of  Redemption,"  by 
completing  the  system  of  Kant  and  Shopenhauer  would  con- 
firm and  reconcile  Buddhism  and  pure  Christianity.     And  Mr. 


388  Eclectic  Religious  Philosophy.  [part  i. 

F.  T.  Palgrave  in  a  philosophic  poem  on  the  "  Reign  of  Law," 
designed  to  celebrate  the  marriage  of  religious  faith  with  the 
evolutionism  of  the  day,  reaches  the  optimistic  conclusion  : 

"  Then  though  the  sun  go  up 
His  beaten  azure  way, 
God  may  fulfil  His  thought 

And  bless  His  ■world  to-day; 
Beside  the  law  of  things 

The  law  of  mind  enthrone, 
And  for  the  hope  of  all 
Reveal  Himself  in  One ; 
Himself  the  way  that  leads  us  thither, 
The  All-in- All,  the  Whence  and  Whither." 

The  psychical  and  metaphysical  sciences,  as  thus  conquered 
and  fortified  by  the  eclectic  spirit,  have  ever  and  anon  been 
made  illustrious  with  apologetic  sallies  and  captures,  some  of 
which  remain  as  splendid  trophies  while  others  may  only  prove 
as  dangerous  as  the  wooden  horse  in  the  siege  of  Troy. 

Eclectic  Religious  Philosophy. 

At  length  we  behold  our  daring  eclectic  on  the  summit  of 
philosophy  itself,  surveying  and  claiming  the  whole  domain 
of  the  sciences,  both  rational  and  revealed,  in  some  bold 
theory  of  universal  knowledge,  like  an  imperial  champion 
that  would  fling  his  challenge  in  the  face  of  both  armies. 

The  history  of  modern  religious  thought  is  full  of  attempts 
to  combine  reason  and  revelation,  without  any  adequate 
philosophical  examination  of  their  respective  powers  and 
prerogatives,  and  of  pretended  harmonies  of  science  and 
religion,  based  upon  no  due  inductive  investigation  of  nature, 
and  no  true  exegetical  study  of  Scripture.  It  was  thus  that 
Jacob  Boehme,  the  inspired  cobler  of  Goerlitz,  in  a  work  on 
the  Birth  and  Signature  of  all  Being,  by  an  inward  divine 
illumination  claimed  to  have  revealed  a  system  of  universal 
science,  which  was  afterwards  pursued  in  England  by  More 
and  Pordage,  in  France  by  Poiret  and  St.  Martin,  and  in  Ger- 
many to  the  time  of  Schclling.  It  was  thus  that  Emanuel 
Swedenborg,  founder  of  the  Church  of  the  New  Jerusalem, 
combining  rare  scientific  and  religious  attainments,  gave  to  the 
world  with  the  authority  of  a  seer,  his  Celestial  Arcana  and 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclectic  Religions  Philosophy.  389 

Apocalypse  Unveiled,  wherein  was  opened  to  view  the  entire 
universe,  with  all  its  endless  degrees  and  correspondences, 
from  the  worm  to  the  archangel,  from  nothingness  to  Deity, 
throughout  heaven,  earth  and  hell.  It  has  been  thus,  in  more 
recent  times,  that  the  devout  disciples  of  Kant,  Fichte,  Schel- 
ling  and  Hegel  have  been  constructing  immense  systems  of 
physical  and  metaphysical  science,  philosophies  of  nature  and 
of  religion,  which  aim  to  embrace  the  entire  content  of  all 
possible  revelation  and  experience,  in  advance  of  any  full 
empirical  study  either  of  the  word  or  of  the  works  of  God. 
And  it  is  thus,  in  our  own  day,  that  many  eminent  Christian 
thinkers,  undaunted  by  former  failures  and  the  jeers  of  scepti- 
cal critics,  are  still  seeking  for  some  exhaustive  theory  of 
knowledge,  which  shall  be  at  once  consistent  with  their  faith 
in  Scripture  and  their  reliance  upon  reason ;  adventurous 
visionaries,  who  have  soared  away  from  earth  and  time  and 
sense  as  into  the  very  heaven  of  absolute  truth,  Icarus-like, 
only  to  fall  back  again  dazzled  and  bewildered  with  excess  of 
knowledge ;  passionate  wooers  of  wisdom  who,  like  Ixion, 
have  but  embraced  a  shadow  for  a  goddess,  having  forgotten 
that  divine  philosophy  flees  from  pedantry,  irreverence  and 
pride,  and  is  only  to  be  won  in  the  sincere  love  of  truth  as 
truth,  and  for  its  own  sake. 

At  the  same  time,  these  are  not  to  be  classed  with  such 
other  philosophers  as  may  have  failed  in  their  quest  simply 
from  not  fully  mastering  the  route  and  method  which  they 
have  pursued.  From  both  of  the  two  rival  schools  of  thought 
the  forerunners  of  a  sound  religious  eclecticism  may  be  seen 
already  meeting  in  the  same  conclusions.  On  the  one  side, 
idealism  has  had  its  Malebranche  and  Berkeley,  dwelling  in  the 
vision  and  among  the  very  thoughts  of  the  revealing  God ; 
and  still  has  such  enlightened  critics  as  Frazer  and  Krauth, 
who  can  perceive  its  strength  as  well  as  its  weakness  in  its 
bearing  upon  the  pure  spiritualism  of  Christianity.  Trans- 
cendentalism has  been  heralded  by  Coleridge,  Emerson, 
Ripley,  not  wanting  in  the  vision  and  faculty  divine,  and  may 
also  claim  such  discriminating  advocates  as  Hickok,  Scclye 
and  Dabney,  who  can  discern  through  the  empirical  veil  of 
sense    an    infinite    Creator   with    a   supernatural    revelation. 


390  Eclectic  Religious  Philosophy.  [part  i. 

Absolutism  has  been  projected  by  such  world-seeking 
explorers  as  Krause  and  Frothinghani,  lost  in  the  shoreless 
ocean  of  being  and  knowing;  and  can  boast  of  such  more 
cautious  thinkers  as  Ferrier  and  Calderwood,  who  make  a 
disclosure  of  the  Infinite  Reason  to  the  finite  reason  at  least 
probable  by  making  it  conceivable.  And,  on  the  other  side 
realism  is  represented  by  such  writers  as  Ulrici,  whose  pro- 
found treatise  on  "God  and  Nature"  is  designed  to  show 
that  science  involves  faith  as  well  as  religion,  and  pre- 
supposes the  idea  of  a  Creator  as  the  rational  postulate  of  all 
physical  knowledge;  Murphy,  according  to  whose  "Scientific 
Bases  of  Faith"  a  supernatural  revelation  will  be  found 
logically  supported  by  the  natural  sciences  as  they  are  them- 
selves supported  by  mechanics  and  mathematics ;  and  Fair- 
bairn,  whose  recent  "  Studies  in  the  Philosophy  of  Religion," 
involve  the  conclusion  that  both  Science  and  Faith,  in  order 
to  be  reconciled,  must  unite  in  the  mutual  recognition  of  the 
creation  and  the  Creator  as  indissoluble  and  harmonious. 
And  numerous  other  thinkers,  such  as  Zeising,  Frohscham- 
mer,  Christlieb,  Scholten,  Naville,  Barnard,  Washburn,  Por- 
ter, Henry  B.  Smith,  Bascom,  Woodrow,  who  have  either 
written  formal  treatises  upon  the  reconciliation  of  reason  and 
revelation,  or  shown  a  philosophical  grasp  of  the  problem,  and 
contributed  valuable  memoirs  and  essays  towards  its  elucida- 
tion. 

Meanwhile,  too,  a  large,  more  practical  class  of  religious 
eclectics  are  engaged  in  the  popular  effort  to  reconcile  the 
existing  bodies  of  scientific  and  biblical  knowledge,  without 
much  deep  inquiry  into  their  fundamental  principles.  Mr. 
James  Hinton,  of  London,  in  an  essay  on  Man,  designed  for 
the  right  interpretation  of  nature,  has  taken  the  practical 
ground  that  the  union  of  science  and  religion  is  not  optional, 
a  thing  to  be  attempted  or  avoided,  but  a  fact  to  which  we 
must  conform  ourselves,  since  science  of  itself  is  religious, 
and  in  its  own  progress  affirms  the  truths  of  the  Christian 
records.  Professor  Joseph  Le  Conte,  in  his  Sunday  lectures 
on  "Religion  and  Science,  "  has  clearly  exposed  the  difficul- 
ties and  misconceptions  which  now  hinder  a  perfect  under- 
standing between  the  students  of  Nature  and  of  Scripture, 


CHAP.  IV.]  Eclectic  Religious  Philcsophy.  391 

and  gathered  scientific  proofs  and  illustrations  of  the  leading 
truths  in  natural  and  revealed  theology.  Chancellor  Winchell, 
in  his  "Reconciliation  of  Religion  and  Science,"  recounts  the 
gradual  encroachments  of  exact  knowledge  upon  the  realm 
of  faith,  but  conserves  a  pure  theism  as  consistent  with  the 
most  scientific  conception  of  natural  law,  and  from  the  history 
and  present  state  of  the  physical  sciences  collects  evidence  of 
their  accordance  with  the  essential  meaning  of  Scripture. 
Mr.  James  F.  Bixby,  in  his  "  Similarities  of  Physical  and  Reli- 
gious Knowledge,"  without  dwelling  upon  any  of  their  special 
correspondences  in  existing  interpretations  of  nature  and 
Scripture,  unfolds  their  general  resemblance  of  methods  and 
results,  their  identical  interests  and  underlying  unities,  and 
recommends  the  remedy  for  their  antagonism  expressed  in 
his  motto  from  Lowell: 

"  Science  was  Faith  once ;  Faith  were  Science  now, 
Would  she  but  lay  her  bow  and  arrows  by 
And  arm  her  with  the  weapons  of  the  time." 

Dr.  Andrew  Peabody,  in  his  Ely  lectures  on  "Christianity 
and  Science,"  by  a  rich  and  lucid  argument  has  shown  that 
both  rest  upon  the  same  foundations  of  testimony,  experi- 
ment and  intuition.  Chancellor  Crosby,  in  his  vigorous 
essay,  "The  Bible  on  the  side  of  Science,"  has  maintained  that 
science  has  ever  been  fostered  and  promoted  by  lovers  of  the 
Bible,  that  the  great  leaders  of  science  have  been  believ^ers  in 
the  Bible,  that  the  Bible  is  a  scientific  book,  full  of  statements 
anticipatory  and  confirmatory  of  the  chief  discoveries  in  the 
different  sciences,  and  that  empirical  science  can  only  be  com- 
pleted by  the  truths  of  revelation.  President  McCosh,  in  his 
Ely  lectures  on  "  Christianity  and  Positivism,"  has  traversed 
the  physical,  mental  and  historical  sciences,  discussing  the 
various  questions  of  the  day,  which  are  emerging  in  Natural 
Theology  and  Christian  apologetics.  Professor  Dawson,  in 
the  Morse  lectures  on  the  "Bible  and  Nature,"  has  combined 
his  large  scientific  knowledge  with  an  anti-evolutionistic  inter- 
pretation qf  such  Scriptures  as  touch  upon  the  story  of  the 
earth  and  man.  Professor  Tayler  Lewis,  in  the  Vedder 
Lectures,  at  Rutgers  College,  on  "  Nature  and  the  Scriptures," 
has  dwelt  with  unwavering  philosophic  faith  upon  the  majesty 


392  Crude  Religious  Culture.  [part  i. 

and  glory  of  God  in  the  Bible  as  fully  solving  all  the  prob- 
lems which  modern  science  has  raised  without  being  able 
to  master.  And  to  these  should  be  added  many  of  the 
lectures  on  the  Boyle,  Bampton  and  Hulscan  foundations, 
the  Burnet  essays,  the  publications  of  the  Christian  Evidence 
Society,  the  discussions  of  the  Victoria  Institute,  and  all  the 
countless  discourses,  journals  and  reviews  which  have  made 
this  whole  subject  the  trite  theme  of  the  day. 

The  eclectic  philosophy,  which  would  thus  overrun  the 
wide  domain  of  the  sciences  in  search  of  new  proofs  and  illus- 
trations of  the  Christian  faith,  cannot  but  be  useful  and 
encouraging,  but  is  plainly  no  more  conclusive  than  a  brilliant 
raid  through  an  enemy's  country  or  a  display  of  trophies 
before  the  battle  is  won. 

Crude  Religious  Culture. 

At  the  last,  the  eclectic  spirit  may  be  seen  emerging  in 
practical  life,  with  a  premature  attempt  to  blend  the  religious 
and  secular  elements  in  every  sphere  of  civilization,  like  the 
transient  occupation  of  conquered  provinces  by  an  army  which 
cannot  hold  the  ground  which  it  wins. 

The  primitive  and  mediaeval  forms  of  Christian  culture  have 
thus  been  advocated  and  revived  in  the  midst  of  modern 
society,  with  more  or  less  completeness,  by  different  parties  in 
the  various  churches  and  denominations.  Mr.  St.  George 
Mivart,  as  an  advanced  Roman  Catholic,  in  his  essays  on 
"  Contemporary  Evolution,"  has  ingeniously  argued  that  the 
scientific  law  of  development  has  reached  its  climax  in  doc- 
trinal history  by  the  recent  decree  of  papal  infallibility;  that 
the  social,  political,  scientific,  and  jesthctical  evolutions  which 
have  followed  the  Reformation  arc  but  a  reversion  to  Pagan- 
ism ;  and  that  the  existing  conflict  between  the  Pagan  and 
Christian  elements  of  culture  can  only  issue  in  the  survival 
and  re-establishment  of  the  mediaeval  theocracy  and  philos- 
ophy. The  aisthetical,  doctrinal,  and  ecclesiastical  ritualists 
of  the  English  Church,  as  led  by  Keble,  Pusey  and  Newman, 
have  been  urging  a  similar  restoration  of  primitive  Christianity 
in  the  realms  of  art,  science,  and  politics.  Principal  Tulloch 
and  Professor  Shairpe  exemplify  the  re-union  of  religion  and 


CHAP.  IV.]  Crude  Rslig'.oiis  Culture.  393 

culture  in  the  Scottish  Kirk.  The  different  American  churches, 
though  much  farther  removed  from  such  discussions,  are  per- 
vaded by  philosophical  and  liturgical  tendencies  in  the  same 
general  direction.  Dr.  Bellows,  in  his  eloquent  discourses  on 
the  "  Suspense  of  Faith,"  turns  from  the  distracting  anarchy 
of  the  present  to  a  glowing  future,  when  literature,  art,  politics, 
and  religion  shall  teem  with  the  fruits  of  a  new  Christian  cul- 
ture, born  of  the  marriage  of  European  with  American  in- 
fluences. While  Arthur  Hugh  Clough  would  rest  content  in 
the  classic  revival  of  the  last  four  centuries,  and 

"  from  no  building,  gay  or  solemn, 
Can  spare  the  shapely  Grecian  column  ;" 

James  Russell  Lowell,  in  his  "Cathedral,"  depicts  the  \\'estern 
Goth,  like  his  Northern  ancestor,  as  but  the  pioneer  of  a 
young  and  yet  more  vigorous  civilization,  in  which 

"  whatsoe'er 
The  form  of  building  or  the  creed  professed, 
The  Cross,  bold  type  of  shame  to  homage  turned, 
Shall  tower  as  sovereign  emblem  over  all." 

Already  the  religious  eclectic  is  seeking  a  re-  consecration 
of  literature.  He  would  break  that  false  alliance  of  elegant 
letters  with  worldliness,  immorality,  and  irreligion  which  has 
been  growing  for  several  centuries  past,  and  win  back  the 
errant  muse  of  poetry  to  the  sacred  haunts  of  its  earlier  devo- 
tion. According  to  his  special  predilections,  he  prizes  Dante, 
Milton,  Herbert,  Pollock,  Cowper,  or  Wesley  above  any  of 
the  modern  bards  who  draw  inspiration  from  secular  themes. 
The  sacred  dramas  of  Hannah  More,  the  devout  verses  of 
Felicia  Hemans  and  Lydia  Sigourney,  the  moral  tales  of  Maria 
Edgeworth,  the  religious  novels  of  Elizabeth  Sewell  and 
Catharine  Sinclair  indicate  to  him  the  possibilities  of  a  new 
Christian  literature,  which  shall  be  made  to  order,  as  the 
reward  of  blended  piety  and  genius.  And  forthwith  the 
Sunday-school  library  becomes  stocked  with  Bible  stories  and 
sacred  romances,  designed  to  exorcise  the  heathen  mythology 
of  the  nursery ;  the  Tract  society  drives  a  brisk  competition 
with  the  cheap  novel ;  the  sectarian  Publication  House  em- 
bellishes the  most  polemic  orthodoxy  with  new  literary  forms  ; 
and  the  religious  journal  undertakes  to  sift  the  wheat  from  the 

2Z 


394  Crude  Religious  Culture.  [part  i. 

chaff  of  the  Satanic  press.  Or  if  he  have  a  more  philosophical 
appreciation  of  the  true  sources  of  literary  inspiration,  he  is 
content  to  dream  of  some  better  time  'when,  as  Dr.  Peabody 
has  well  expressed  it,  our  English  literature  shall  have  a'  re- 
newed Christian  baptism,  and  our  poetry  a  fresh  Pentecost 
from  on  high. 

Already,  too,  he  is  aiming  at  a  re-consecration  of  art.  That 
prodigal  child  of  the  Church  he  would  reclaim  from  its  long 
course  of  worldly  dissipation,  and  restore  the  mediaeval  cathe- 
dral, with  its  cruciform  plan,  its  pictured  saints,  its  sculptured 
symbols,  robed  priests,  and  antiphonal  choirs,  as  the  true 
temple  of  the  Christian  muses.  He  would  even  celebrate 
Protestant  worship  amid  the  aesthetic  appliances  of  the  Catho- 
lic ritual,  with  a  pulpit  in  the  Apse,  a  table  for  the  Altar,  a 
Daily  Exhortation  long  since  grown  obsolete,  a  Psalter  to  be 
said  that  ought  only  to  be  sung,  Calvinistic  prayers  which 
were  never  meant  to  be  intoned,  and  a  Sermon  made  inarticu- 
late by  pillared  roofs  that  were  only  fitted  to  gather  and  roll 
back  the  sound  of  anthems.  Should  he  eschew  such  relics  of 
popery,  then  he  will  borrow  any  other  artistic  forms  which 
may  be  at  hand,  and  straightway  he  builds  a  Grecian  portico 
in  place  of  the  Gothic  spire,  surrounds  Christian  worshippers 
with  Pagan  ornaments  and  emblems,  listens  to  operatic  selec- 
tions instead  of  joining  in  familiar  hymns,  and  even  in  the 
midst  of  a  revival  permits  the  lay-preacher  to  ascend  the 
pulpit  and  exhort  to  an  adjoining  confessional,  whilst  the 
trills  of  a  solo  performer  are  impressed  upon  an  assembly 
bowed  in  silent  prayer.  Or  if  he  have  a  more  liturgical  con- 
ception of  the  just  relations  of  piety  and  culture,  devotion  and 
taste,  he,  seeks  a  cure  for  existing  evils  by  reviving  a  defunct 
liturgy,  or  constructing  a  new  order  of  services,  or  issuing  a 
manual  of  forms,  or  looking  beyond  such  tentative  efforts  and 
experiments  to  the  learning,  genius,  and  faith  blended  in  some 
new  Christian  art  that  is  yet  to  be. 

In  like  manner,  he  would  at  once  Christianize  all  existing 
politics.  As  a  faithful  Catholic,  he  would  merge  the  state  in 
the  church,  and  longs  for  the  return  of  that  imperial  theocracy 
which  once  preserved  the  balance  of  power  throughout  Europe, 
while  it  held  kings,  lords  and  commons  as  obedient  vassals  at 


CHAP.  IV.]  Crude  Religions  Culture.  395 

its  feet.  As  a  loyal  Protestant,  he  would  blend  the  church 
with  the  state,  and  does  not  scruple  to  submit  her  dogmas  to 
the  decisions  of  courts,  to  mingleher  ritual  with  public  forms, 
to  insert  her  doctrines  in  the  constitution,  and  to  entrust  her 
whole  function  of  education  to  the  legislature.  Or  if  neither 
church  nor  state,  as  now  organized  and  opposed,  can  claim  his 
hearty  alliance,  then  he  dreams  of  some  new  Christian  com- 
monwealth, based  upon  the  Scripture  ideas  of  charity,  equality 
and  fraternity,  and  will  be  heard  piping  its  pastorals  amid  all 
the  strife  of  parties  and  the  din  of  arms.  He  becomes  the 
philanthropist,  who  would  harmonize  the  warring  nations  by 
means  of  peace  societies,  international  courts,  and  world's 
congresses ;  or  the  social  'reformer  who,  in  this  wayward 
youth  of  civilization,  would  inaugurate  the  mature  reign  of 
reason  and  virtue,  as  he  proceeds  to  erect,  over  the  very 
embers  of  revolution,  like  villages  upon  the  slope  of  a  volcano, 
his  little  sequestered  arcadias,  phalansteries,  communities, 
which  we  are  invited  to  admire  as  actual  models  of  Christian 
society,  and  advanced  samples  of  the  predicted  era  of  inno- 
cence and  peace. 

And,  at  the  same  time,  he  strives  at  once  to  Christianize  all 
existing  religion.  Viewing  heathenism  as  but  a  destined  pro- 
vince of  the  papacy,  he  would  heal  the  divisions  of  Christen- 
dom at  the  fount  of  ecclesiastical  infallibility,  and  gather 
the  scattered  flock  of  Christ  within  the  fold  of  the  one  chief 
Shepherd,  the  Bishop  of  Rome  and  successor  of  St.  Peter. 
Regarding  the  different  religious  denominations  and  churches 
as  more  or  less  analogous  and  congruous,  he  would  begin  the 
work  of  fusion  and  consolidation  by  combining  them  exter- 
nally under  Boards  of  Foreign  and  Domestic  Missions,  Bible 
and  Tract  Societies,  inter-ecclesiastical  Conferences,  General 
Church  Councils,  and  Evangelical  Alliances.  Or  should  no 
existing  organization  meet  his  ideal  of  doctrine  and  polit)^ 
then  he  would  fuse  all  creeds  into  one,  which  shall  retain  only 
their  common  truths,  and  resolve  all  sects,  by  himself  adding 
another  to  the  medley.  He  becomes  the  religious  reformer 
who  at  this  late  day,  after  eighteen  centuries  of  progress,  would 
proclaim  his  discovery  of  the  only  true  Christianity,  or  the 
philosophic  religionist  who  would  ciystalize  about  the  Chris- 


396  Modern  Religious  Eclecticism.  [part  i. 

tian  faith  the  cognate  truths  of  Judaism,  Mohammedanism, 
Brahminism,  Buddhism,  Polytheism,  together  with  all  the  forms 
of  Deism  and  Pantheism,  and  gravely  invite  mankind  to  flock 
into  his  new  church  of  humanity,  and  proceed  to  organize 
the  millennium  upon  his  platform. 

Thus  the  impatients  on  both  sides  are  running  into  the  like 
absurdity,  and  would  precipitate  the  same  evils.  In  so  far  as 
they  prevail,  they  only  fret  the  cords  already  strained  bqtween 
religion  and  science,  and  threaten  to  wreck  both  Christianity 
and  civilization  in  worse  anarchy. 

Against  such  eclecticism  it  need  only  be  urged,  that  the 
existing  are  not  the  normal  relations  of  reason  and  revelation. 
While  in  the  abstract  they  are  harmonious,  yet  as  at  present 
developed  and  adjusted,  they  alike  demand  of  their  votaries  a 
spirit  of  mutual  deference  and  conciliation,  and  a  system  of 
preliminary  rules,  equally  binding  upon  both,  in  all  their  joint 
researches.  Any  forced  combination  of  their  several  products, 
like  that  now  so  frequently  attempted,  overlooks  their  pre- 
sent anomalous  condition,  and  is,  for  several  reasons,  to  be 
discouraged. 
/^  In  the  first  place,  it  is  at  best  specious  and  partial.  Too 
often  it  consists  of  a  mere  rude  welding  of  dogmas  with  hypo- 
theses, devoid  of  any  rational  consistence,  and  leaving  out 
large  portions  of  fact,  or  mixing  them  with  mere  conjecture. 
No  cognitive  system  can  be  real  and  universal  which  simply 
accepts  or  rejects  the  results  of  research  at  the;  bidding  of  pre- 
judice, and  then  works  them  into  a  fantastic  composition  to 
please  a  devout  or  a  speculative  fancy.  Every  attempt  at  a 
summation  of  truth  which  proceeds  in  the  interest  of  either 
party,  so  far  from  involving  a  thorough  fusion  of  knowledge 
with  knowledge,  can  only  issue  in  a  crude  amalgam  of  fact 
and  theory,  fiction  and  reality. 

In  the  second  place,  it  is  in  its  mode  of  action  illogical  and 
unscientific.  Instead  of  patiently  waiting  for  a  strict  induction 
and  full  exegesis,  it  takes  the  existing  imperfect  results  of 
both,  and  blindly,  without  reference  to  first  principles,  pro- 
ceeds to  combine  them,  forcing  nature  out  of  its  sphere  as  a 
mere  witness  to  Scripture,  and  Scripture  out  of  its  sphere  as  a 
mere  witness  to  nature.     But  so  long  as  a  scientific  hypothesis 


CHAP.  IV.]  Concluding  Argument.  '      397 

is  not  verified,  or  a  theological  dogma  is  not  demonstrated,  the 
risk  must  remain,  that,  in  using  either  for  the  benefit  of  the 
other,  we  may  be  only  driving  truth  into  alliance  with  error. 
The  known  in  both  is  alone  that  which  can  or  does  become 
consistent.  Only  when  we  have  logically  adjusted  the  rela- 
tions of  reason  and  revelation,  and  studied  all  the  phenomena 
in  their  vital  connections,  and  without  either  scientific  or  reli- 
gious prejudice,  will  we  be  able  to  frame  that  summative  sys- 
tem by  means  of  which  we  may  sift  the  ascertained  from  the 
conjectural,  fuse  the  discovered  with  the  revealed,  and  so  build 
the  temple  of  knowledge  with  the  lasting  cement  of  truth. 

In  the  third  place,  it  is  in  its  scope  narrow  and  premature. 
Without  projecting  any  scheme  of  logical  organization  through- 
out the  sciences,  but  simply  because  their  rational  and  revealed 
portions  here  and  there  are  coming  into  harmony,  it  goes  pre- 
cipitately to  work  upon  the  vast  remainder,  and  would  mould 
it  at  once  into  a  system.  And  yet,  we  are  now  only  in  the 
first  stages  of  the  great  reconciliation.  Fiercer  strifes  may 
await  us,  in  the  more  undeveloped  sciences,  than  any  we  have 
survived.  If  astronomy  could  make  such  warfare,  at  the  mere 
outposts  of  revelation,  when  it  dwarfed  the  earth  into  an  atom 
in  space ;  if  geology,  at  the  walls  of  the  fortress,  strikes  such 
a  panic  now  that  it  threatens  to  reduce  man  to  an  ephemeron 
in  time ;  and  if  anthropology  is  actually  jarring  the  founda- 
tions with  its  effort  to  degrade  him  to  an  autochthon  in  the 
scale  of  being  ;  what  may  we  expect,  when  at  length  the  cita- 
del is  assailed  by  those  mental  and  moral  sciences  which, 
having  human  nature  for  their  subject,  and  involving  all  the 
great  questions  of  human  duty  and  destiny,  shall  impinge  upon 
the  most  peculiar  topics  of  inspiration,  upon  the  actual  con- 
tents as  well  as  credentials  of  the  heavenly  message  ?  He 
would  be  blind  indeed  to  all  the  lessons  of  history, who  dreams 
that  science  and  religion  have  yet  reached  the  limit  either  of 
their  opposition  or  of  their  contribution  to  each  other;  and  if 
we  may  be  cheered  by  pa.st  triumphs,  not  less  should  we  be 
warned  to  prepare  for  coming  conflicts. 

In  the  fourth  place,  it  is  in  its  whole  practical  aim  visionaiy 
and  vague.  Not  only  does  it  presume,  without  any  truly 
rational  process,  to  have  reached  the  final  s)\stem  of  know- 


398  Modem  Religions  Eclecticism.  [part  i. 

ledge,  but  it  hastens  to  organize  it  in  defiance  of  the  present 
social  state.  Whereas,  even  if  it  had  the  true  ideal,  it  is  not 
to  be  forced  upon  the  world  in  the  way  of  artificial  reform 
and  social  reconstruction.  Whenever  it  comes,  as  it  silently 
pervades  the  influential  mind,  it  may  bring  with  it  an  organi- 
zing force  of  its  own,  which,  without  visible  concert,  passing 
through  and  beneath  all  mere  institutions,  shall  slowly  dissolve 
and  recompose  the  whole  existing  civilization  by  changing 
the  opinions  upon  which  it  is  based.  For  aught  we  can  tell, 
the  present  system  of  church  and  state,  with  all  its  jarring 
sects  and  governments,  may  be  left  upon  the  pathway  of  time 
as  a  mere  outworn  chrysalis,  from  which  society  shall  have 
struggled  forth  into  new  life  and  freedom,  and  the  entire 
political  organization  of  the  race,  at  the  time  when  the  nations 
shall  be  fused  in  the  truth  and  tranquillized  by  love,  may  have 
an  aspect  of  patriarchal  simplicity,  or  be  moulded  into  some 
homogeneous  structure  of  which  no  type  can  now  be  found. 
But,  whatever  it  may  be,  we  can  at  least  be  sure  that  it  is  not 
to  be  compacted  from  existing  institutions  or  wrought  by 
immediate  efforts.  Certainly  no  sect,  political  or  ecclesiastical, 
now  shows  the  means  of  assimilating  all  the  rest  as  by  sheer 
propagandism  or  through  any  plastic  force;  and  no  theory  of 
human  perfectibility  that  has  yet  been  broached  could,  by  the 
mere  display  of  its  charms,  lull  the  social  tumult  to  peace. 

We  must  therefore  grant  that  the  two  interests,  as  now 
related,  cannot  at  once  be  brought  into  a  just,  safe  and  lasting 
union.  By  rashly  overstepping  the  limits  which  still  sunder 
them  and  illogically  proceeding  to  a  forced  compact  of  their 
several  bodies  of  knowledge,  we  simply  drive  them  into  false 
relations  which  must  sooner  or  later  dissolve  and  throw  them 
apart  again  with  harsh  recoil  and  estrangement.  Let  not 
science  offend  the  oracle  it  would  consult,  by  any  irreverent 
spirit;  and  let  not  religion  repel  the  intelligence  it  would 
claim,  by  any  irrational  process;  but  let  each  learn  the  other's 
virtues  and  laws  and  only  join  hands  in  the  oneness  of  truth 
and  upon  the  same  footing  of  mutual  faith  and  love. 


CHAPTER    V. 


MODERN  SCEPTICISM  BETWEEN  SCIENCE  AND 
RELIGION. 


There  is  no  sadder  sight  beneath  the  sun  than  that  of 
brave  men  quaiHng  in  a  good  cause.  We  picture  the  dismal 
spectacle  after  the  glory  of  battle  has  collapsed  in  rout  and 
panic ;  the  field  of  death  and  carnage,  as  the  sanguinary  sun- 
set declines,  and  the  pallid  moon  lends  a  sickly  horror  to  the 
scene ;  the  beaten  chieftains  wrangling  over  their  defeat,  and 
the  fallen  leader  sitting  apart  in  sullen  gloom.  We  think  of 
how  much  pride  and  courage  and  hope  have  been  precipitated 
into  su(4i  chagrin  and  despair  and  weakness ;  and  we  are 
almost  ready  to  forget  the  duty  of  victory  in  pity  for  the  van- 
quished, and  to  pardon  the  baseness  of  surrender  as  but  sub- 
mission to  fate. 

In  some  such  mood,  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  the  academic 
poet  of  the  modern  school  of  ennui,  would  seem  to  have 
expressed  the  despair  of  baffled  philosophy  at  finding  her 
perennial  problems  still  unsolved  : 

"  Achilles  ponders  in  his  tent; 
The  kings  of  modern  thought  are  dumb. 
Silent  they  are,  though  not  content, 
And  wait  to  see  the  future  come. 
They  have  the  grief  men  had  of  yore, 
But  they  contend  and  cry  no  more." 

And  Schleiermacher,  gloomily  foreboding  the  present  crisis 
nearly  fifty  years  ago,  wrote  to  his  friend  Liicke  :  "  I  shall  not 
live  to  see  those  days,  but  may  lay  myself  down  to  my  last 

399 


400  Modern  Religious  Scepticism.  [part  i, 

sleep  in  peace.  But  what  do  you  and  your  contemporaries 
intend  to  do  ?  Will  you  entrench  yourselves  behind  the  out- 
works and  let  yourselves  be  blockaded  by  science  ?  The 
bombardment  of  derision  would  do  you  little  harm.  But 'the 
blockade  ?  The  starving  out  by  science,  which,  because  you 
thus  entrench  yourselves,  will  be  forced  by  you  to  raise  the 
standard  of  unbelief?  Is  it  thus  that  the  knot  of  history  is  to 
be  severed,  and  Christianity  to  be  allied  with  ignorance,  and 
science  with  unbelief?" 

We  have  termed  this  class  of  religious  thinkers  the 
Despondents  or  Sceptics,  because  they  despair  of  any  recon- 
ciliation of  the  two  great  interests,  and  can  but  lament  them 
as  doomed  to  their  present  relations.  The  breaches  between 
Scripture  and  science  they  see  no  way  of  healing.  From  the 
ideal  unity  of  truth  they  turn  away  to  the  actual  disorder  of 
knowledge,  and  wander  amid  its  wilderness  as  in  a  maze  of 
contradiction  and  anomaly ;  whilst  in  the  practical  sphere  they 
are  consistently  led  to  disavow  all  attempts  at  social  ameliora- 
tion, and  to  surrender  even  the  hope  of  human  progress.  In 
short,  they  are  the  recreants  on  the  field  of  philosophy  who 
would  sheath  their  swords  in  mid  battle,  or  snap  them 
asunder  in  the  agony  of  supposed  defeat. 

In  contrast  with  the  Extremists  and  the  Indifferentists  they 
may  readily  grant  the  theoretical  importance  of  the  question 
before  us,  and  in  concert  with  the  Eclectics,  they  may  even  at 
times  have  attempted  its  logical  settlement ;  but  somehow  the 
attempt  only  issues  in  failure  and  discouragement.  Owing  to 
a  sceptical  or  unbelieving  temperament,  or  from  a  love  of 
singularity  and  fondness  for  paradox,  or  from  a  surfeit  of 
speculation  and  genuine  bewilderment  of  reason,  or  in  sheer 
reaction  from  the  very  eclecticism  that  has  fiiled  to  combine 
the  two  sets  of  truths,  they  accept  them  both,  only  to  pro- 
nounce them  incongruous  and  irreconcileable.  And  they 
may  be  found  cither  in  the  ranks  of  religion  or  of  science. 

On  the  one  side,  the  religious  sceptic  or  desponding 
religionist  will  disparage  not  less  revelation  than  reason.  He 
looks  upon  both  as  belonging  to  an  earthly  and  transitory 
state,  and  hereafter  to  be  merged  in  the  rapt  intuition  and  full 
apocalypse  of  truth.     The  one  is  so  meagre  and  the  other  so 


CHAP,  v.]  Modern  Religious  Scepticism.  401 

erring,  that  he  cannot  hope  they  will  ever  together  yield 
enough  of  knowledge  to  displace  all  ignorance,  or  indeed  do 
scarcely  aught  else  than  show  their  own  necessary  imperfec- 
tion. To  combine  the  mysteries  of  Nature  with  those  of 
Scripture,  he  will  maintain,  must  only  breed  increased  per- 
plexity, and  will  bewail  the  present  chaos  of  doctrines  and 
theories  as  but  the  inevitable  and  final  state  of  earthly  know- 
ledge. His  theology  bids  adieu  to  science  as  a  lorn  child  of 
earth,  and  seeks  some  mystic  elysium  in  the  skies. 

On  the  other  side,  the  scientific  sceptic  or  desponding 
scientist,  will  disparage  not  less  reason  than  revelation.  In 
his  view  they  are  both  occupied  with  questions  which  are 
insoluble,  and  upon  which  together  they  can  shed  only 
enough  of  light  to  make  the  darkness  visible;  the  one  serving 
but  to  show  the  unrevealed  to  be  unrevealable,  and  the  other, 
to  prove  the  undiscovered  to  be  undiscoverable.  He  will 
even  argue  that  their  joint  process  must  have  its  logical  goal 
in  the  incomprehensible  and  unknown,  and  will  cite  the 
meagre  conclusions  in  which  they  unite  as  proof  that  all  our 
knowledge  is  only  a  laborious  learning  of  our  ignorance. 
Science  is  to  him  but  a  cruel  Sphinx,  whose  smile  only  mocks 
while  it  charms,  and  at  whose  feet  even  theology  must  sit  in 
dumb  despair. 

The  traces  of  such  scepticism  may  be  seen  in  history  at 
every  great  juncture,  when  old  faiths  are  decaying  and  new 
truths  emerging  into  view,  while  yet  their  consistence  and 
harmony  are  in  question.  It  was  somewhat  of  this  spirit,  in 
its  scientific  form,  which  pervaded  all  philosophy  amid  the 
declining  mythologies  "of  Greece  and  Rome,  as  expressed  by 
the  cynic,  the  stoic,  and  the  satirist,  and  at  length  uncon- 
sciously voiced  in  the  sneer  of  Pilate  to  Jesus,  "What  is 
truth?"  It  was  somewhat  of  this  spirit,  in  its  religious  form, 
which  prompted  the  rationalizing  fathers,  such  as  Philo  and 
Origen,  to  surrender  the  obvious  sense  of  Scripture  to  the 
demands  of  Platonism  and  even  to  evaporate  its  essential  doc- 
trines into  metaphysical  abstractions.  It  was  somewhat  of 
this  spirit  which  reappeared  in  its  religious  form  among  the 
sceptical  schoolmen,  such  as  Cusa  and  Agrippa,  in  their 
lamentations  upon  the  uncertainty  and  vanity  of  all  know- 
3A 


402  Modern  Religions  Scepticism.  [part  i. 

ledge,  both  divine  and  human.  It  has  been  this  spirit,  in  both 
of  its  forms,  which  has  since  animated  all  Protestant  rational- 
ism, widening  the  chasm  between  Scripture  and  science, 
until  it  seems  impassable.  And  it  is  now  this  spirit  which 
would  discourage  all  attempts  to  heal  the  great  schism,  by 
recalling  the  failures  of  an  unwise  eclecticism  which  has 
rashly  essayed  the  task,  and  citing  the  misgivings  of  veteran 
divines  and  disappointed  thinkers,  who  can  only  view  any 
renewal  of  the  effort  with  that  sad  incredulity  with  which  age 
commiserates  the  dreams  of  youth,  and  experience  chills  the 
enthusiasm  of  innocence. 

The  history  of  religious  scepticism  has  been  reviewed  from 
various  stand-points  by  such  writers  as  Rohr,  Saintes,  Hunt, 
Tulloch,  Stephen,  Rigg,  Mackay,  Fisher,  Gillett,  Frothing- 
ham,  and  its  numerous  illustrations  may  be  gathered  from 
the  special  treatises  which  have  hitherto  been  noticed.  All 
that  the  present  argument  requires  is  the  selection  of  a  few 
examples  of  such  sceptical  scientists  and  religionists  as  would 
needlessly  surrender  important  classes  of  scientific  facts,  which 
might  be  brought  into  harmony  with  religion,  or  essential  por- 
tions of  religious  truth,  which  ought  to  be  kept  in  harmony 
with  science.  And  as  we  proceed,  it  should  be  borne  in 
mind  that  religious  scepticism  admits  of  many  phases  and 
degrees,  from  the  reluctant  doubt  of  the  believer  to  the  ready 
cavil  of  the  critic,  and  that  the  farthest  departures  from  tradi- 
tional orthodoxy,  in  a  Schleiermacher,  a  Channing,  or  a  Kings- 
ley  need  never  stint  our  praise  of  their  true  Christian  piety 
and  virtue.  The  typical  examples  of  the  sceptical  spirit  are 
not  the  struggling,  courageous  souls  who  would  rather  believe 
than  doubt,  and  whose  very  perplexity  often  comes  from  an 
honest  effort  to  conquer  their  own  misgivings  or  relieve  the 
scruples  of  other  minds;  but  the  more  timorous,  cynical 
natures  who  will  have  their  sneer  even  at  the  expense  of 
truth,  and  neither  themselves  lay  the  doubts  which  they 
have  raised,  nor  encourage  any  to  attack  and  overcome  them. 

We  shall  meet  such  sceptics  in  each  of  the  physical  sciences, 
amid  the  great  battle  of  infidels  and  apologists,  fleeing  from  the 
field  of  controversy,  like  fugitives  who  sound  a  retreat  at  the 
rear,  while  yet  the  shouts  of  victory  arc  ascending  at  the  front. 


Scepticism  in  Astronomy.  403 


Scepticism  in  Astronomy. 

The  whole  bibhcal  astronomy  has  thus  at  times  been  de- 
preciated. From  the  first,  there  have  been  doubts  as  to  its 
consistency  with  celestial  physics.  It  was  not  surprising, 
surely,  that  any  theistic  arguments  based  upon  the  old  Ptole- 
maic system  should  be  received  with  sceptical  misgivings. 
Alphonzo  of  Castile,  the  liberal  patron  of  the  astronomical 
tables  bearing  his  name,  after  vainly  trying  to  comprehend 
the  complex  scheme  of  the  seventy-nine  crystalline  spheres,  is 
said  to  have  impatiently  exclaimed  that  had  he  been  present 
at  the  creation  he  could  have  suggested  a  wiser  and  better 
plan  of  the  world.  Milton  thought  so  little  of  the  pious  uses 
of  such  a  system,  that  he  represents  it  as  only  fitted  to  move 
the  laughter  of  the  angels  at  the  quaint  opinions  of  men : 

"  how  they  will  wield 
The  mighty  frame,  how  build,  unbuild,  contrive 
To  save  appearances ;  how  gird  the  sphere 
With  centric  and  eccentric  scribbled  o'er, 
Cycle  and  epicycle,  orb  in  orb." 

Montaigne,  the  literary  sceptic,  deprecating  the  horrible 
atheism  to  which  the  Reformation  was  tending,  doubted 
whether  the  theory  of  Copernicus  might  not  simply  follow 
that  of  Ptolemy  as  one  philosophical  system  has  ever  been 
superseded  by  another.  Paley  himself,  though  a  Copernican, 
consistently  with  his  utilitarian  view  of  the  divine  attributes, 
depreciated  somewhat  the  whole  astronomical  argument  as 
compared  with  that  afforded  by  the  structure  of  the  human 
body,  which  he  thought  more  obviously  adapted  to  our  wel- 
fare than  the  solar  system.  The  late  Rev.  Baden  Powell,  in 
his  Order  of  Nature,  after  restricting  the  so-called  cosmo- 
theology  to  one  or  two  vague  natural  attributes,  cites  English 
divines  with  French  atheists  to  prove  the  futility  of  identifying 
the  hypothetical  First  Cause  of  the  heavens  with  the  Jehovah 
of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures.  Mr.  Maurice  refuses  to  believe 
that  any  modern  astronomical  ideas  could  have  occurred  to 
the  shepherd  boy  to  whom  the  heavens  declared  the  glory  of 
God  and  the  firmament  showed  His  handiwork.  Professor 
Owen  confesses  that  he  does  not  pretend  to  know  for  what 


404  Scepticism  in  Astronojny.  [part  i. 

purpose  the  stars  were  made  any  more  than  the  flowers  or 
the  crystalhne  gems  or  other  innumerable  beautiful  objects. 
The  great  astronomer  Bessel  would  dissipate  with  scientific 
arguments  the  conjecture  of  those  feeling  hearts  who  seek  for 
sympathy  even  in  the  Moon.  And  when  intelligent  Christian 
thinkers,  like  Coleridge,  Hegel,  and  Whewell,  discourage  all 
attempts  to  connect  the  theory  of  inhabited  worlds  with  the 
doctrine  of  the  Heavenly  Father  and  the  angels,  by  represent- 
ing the  unnumbered  planets,  suns,  and  galaxies  as  so  much 
gross  matter,  mere  lifeless  masses  of  cinder,  slag  and  vapor, 
the  worthless  refuse  of  reason,  and  unveil  the  very  heaven  of 
heavens  as  a  godless  solitude,  it  is  no  wonder  that  other,  dif- 
ferently constituted  persons  are  ready  to  exclaim,  with  more 
meaning  than  the  poet  intended : 

''  O  star-eyed  Science  !  hast  thou  wandered  there 
To  waft  us  but  the  message  of  despan-  ?  " 

Pascal  cpuld  only  find  relief  from  the  overwhelming  mag- 
nificence of  the  material  universe  in  the  thought,  that  though 
it  were  combined  to  annihilate  man,  yet  man  would  be  greater 
than  it,  since  he  alone  knows  that  he  dies.  And  Daniel 
Webster  was  so  oppressed  by  the  sense  of  human  insignifi- 
cance in  contrast  with  the  immensity  of  creation,  that  he 
directed  it  should  be  inserted  in  his  epitaph  as  his  chief  diffi- 
culty in  accepting  the  Christian  faith. 

At  the  same  time,  the  rationalistic  critics  of  Scripture, 
from  Semler  to  Baur,  have  been  busy  with  scientific  explana- 
tions of  the  astronomical  miracles  as  mere  cosmical  pheno- 
mena, which  were  innocently  exaggerated  and  embellished  by 
the  mythic  fancy  of  the  ancient  world,  then  active  among  the 
Jews  as  well  as  the  Gentiles.  The  arrest  of  the  sun  and 
moon  at  the  command  of  Joshua  is  treated  as  a  bold,  rhetori- 
cal trope  in  the  narrative,  or  if  an  actual  occurrence,  as  an 
optical  illusion  such  as  the  mock-moon  of  the  Arctic  atmos- 
phere, or  a  fortunate  coincidence  of  the  long  summer  twilight. 
The  star  of  the  wise  men  was  an  artless  plagiarism  of  the  star 
of  Balaam,  or  a  comet  readily  magnified  into  a  divine  omen  by 
some  pious  Jewish  merchants,  or  a  horoscope  cast  by  eastern 
astrologers  in  the  constellation  of  the  Fish  for  the  ascendant 
house  of  Judah,  or   a  fortunate   conjunction  of  the  planets 


CHAP,  v.]  Scepticism  in  Geology.  405 

Jupiter  and  Saturn  in  a  new  brilliant  luminary  about  the  date 
of  the  nativity.  Even  the  celestial  glory  and  angelic  chorus 
which  surprised  the  simple  shepherds  of  Galilee  is,  with 
Luciferan  cunning,  depicted  as  only  the  glare  of  passing 
lanterns  borne  by  chanting  worshippers  of  the  expected 
Messiah.  And  the  last  great  conflagration  itself,  with  the 
flaming  heavens  and  falling  stars,  is  regarded  as  but  a  symbo- 
lic picture  after  the  manner  of  prophecy,  prefiguring  the  final 
overthrow  of  the  earthly  powers  and  kingdoms  which  oppose 
the  advent  and  reign  of  Christ. 

Scepticism  in  Geology.    .•- 

The  biblical  geology  has,  in  like  manner,  been  largely 
disparaged.  A  reaction  has  followed  the  extravagant  mysti- 
cism of  devout  physicists  in  the  middle  ages,  such  as  Albertus 
and  Vincent  de  Beauvais,  who,  in  their  zeal  to  make  science 
thoroughly  Christian,  strove  to  exhibit  all  nature  as  full  of 
biblical  symbols,  allegories,  and  mementos  ;  and  the  extreme 
tendency  of  many  natural  theologians  to  seek  divine  pur- 
poses in  the  most  trivial  phenomena  has  driven  some  of  their 
critics  to  treat  all  the  religious  lessons  of  terrestrial  physics 
as  the  mere  conceits  of  a  pious  fancy  which  would  absurdly 
exalt  man  as  the  final  cause  of  an  infinite  universe,  and  hail 
as  special  Providences  the  chance  vicissitudes  of  the  sea- 
sons and  other  incidental  beauties  and  utilities  of  nature. 
In  place  of  the  pious  writings  which  glowingly  depicted  the 
whole  earth  as  full  of  the  divine  wisdom  and  goodness,  we 
now  have  exact  scientific  treatises  which  simply  discharge 
the  surrounding  creation  of  all  religious  significance,  leave  it 
as  hard  and  dry  as  the  skeleton  mechanism  which  it  hides,  and 
make  the  more  devout  student  fain  to  protest  with  Wordsworth 
against  such  arid  naturalism  as  worse  than  the  "fair  humani- 
ties of  old  religions  : " 

"  Great  God  !  I'd  rather  be 
A  pagan  suckled  in  a  creed  outworn; 
So  might  I  standing  on  this  pleasant  lea 
Have  glimpses  that  would  make  me  less  forlorn — 
Have  sight  of  Proteus  rising  from  the  sea, 
Or  hear  old  Triton  blow  his  wreathed  horn." 


4o6  Scepticism  in  Geology.  [part  i. 

Some  physicists  would  seem  even  to  take  pains  to  exclude 
all  traces  of  intelligent  order  and  benevolent  design  from  the 
scientific  view  of  nature.  Professor  Rogers  assures  the  Ameri- 
can Scientific  Association  that  the  mathematical  bee  of  the 
Bridgewater  Essayists  no  longer  builds  a  perfect  geometric 
cell  under  the  critical  eye  of  the  most  recent  science,  as  pur- 
sued by  the  late  Professor  Jeffries  Wyman ;  and  suggests  that 
Professor  Chauncey  Wright  was  equally  fortunate  in  showing 
that  the  orderly  arrangement  of  leaves  of  plants  along  their 
axes  was  due  to  circumstances  of  growth  and  not  a  result  of 
blind  law.  And  other  objectors,  while  admitting  the  sym- 
metry of  form  and  harmony  of  color  which  appear  in  the 
works  of  Nature,  have  denied  that  such  effects  could  have 
had  any  benevolent  purpose  in  the  flowers  which  are  born  to 
blush  unseen,  or  the  gems  which  are  hidden  in  the  unfathomed 
depths  of  ocean. 

Biblical  students  and  divines  have  pronounced  the  Hebrew 
cosmogony  unscientific,  and  relinquished  the  task  of  harmo- 
nizing it  with  modern  geology.  Schleiermacher,  long  before 
the  appearance  of  the  "  Essays  and  Reviews,"  confessed  him- 
self ready  to  give  up  the  work  of  the  six  days,  the  very  idea 
of  creation,  and  even  the  whole  of  the  Old  Testament  in  order 
to  save  the  New.  Kalisch,  in  his  commentary,  declared  the 
first  chapter  of  Genesis  wholly  irreconcileable  with  the 
accepted  results  of  physical  science.  Baden  Powell  terms  it 
a  Judaic  myth  which  has  died  a  natural  death.  Another  of 
the  Essayists  and  Reviewers,  Goodwin,  maintains  on  the 
contrary,  that  there  is  nothing  poetical  or  figurative  in  the 
whole  narrative ;  that  Moses  was  simply  an  early  speculator, 
or  sort  of  Hebrew  Descartes,  who  has  become  obsolete,  and 
that  it  has  pleased  Providence  to  use  his  human  utterance  for 
the  education  of  mankind  in  the  true  doctrine  of  the  creation. 
The  more  orthodox  Mr.  Rorison,  in  replying  to  Goodwin, 
admits  that  it  should  be  read  as  a  Psalm  of  Creation,  and 
that  the  conciliatory  schemes  of  Hugh  Miller  and  McCaul 
are  mere  make-shifts.  Maurice,  in  his  Lectures  upon  Genesis, 
exhausts  it  of  all  historic  reality  and  resolves  it  into  a  sort  of 
philosophic  mythus,  exhibiting  the  succession  of  plants, 
birds  and  animals,  not  as  actual  phenomena,  beheld  by  Moses, 


CHAP,  v.]  Scepticism  in  Geology.  407 

but  as  divine  ideals  rising  toward  man,  the  climax  of  creation. 
A  Layman,  writing  to  Mr.  Maurice,  on  the  relative  claims  of 
the  Bible  and  Science,  expresses  his  impatience  at  the 
attempts  to  show  that  the  author  of  the  first  chapter  of 
Genesis  was  inspired  by  a  special  miracle  to  use  language 
which  should  anticipate  all  the  changing  phases  of  human 
discovery.  Mr.  Thomas  Hughes,  in  the  "Tracts  for  Priests 
and  People,"  avers,  that  he  would  be  none  the  worse  if  the 
Mosaic  cosmogony  were  to  disappear  to-morrow.  And 
Mr.  Orr  asserts  that  Unitarians  of  the  present  day  do  not  con- 
ceive themselves  bound  to  defend  the  geology  of  Moses, 

The  geological  miracles  of  the  Old  and  New  Testament 
have  been  stript  of  their  supernatural  halo  by  the  German 
rationalistic  exegetes  Michaelis,  Eichorn,  Paulus  and  Bauer, 
and  reduced  to  the  most  ordinary  phenomena.  According  to 
such  critics  the  Deluge  of  Noah  was  but  a  local  freshet,  since 
magnified  into  a  universal  judgment.  It  was  simply  a  volcanic 
eruption  which  overwhelmed  Sodom  and  Gomorrah  with  fire 
and  brimstone,  like  that  which  has  since  destroyed  the  cities 
of  Herculaneum  and  Pompeii.  The  plagues  of  Egypt,  the 
crossing  of  the  Red  Sea,  the  wanderings  in  the  wilderness,  the 
showers  of  quails  and  manna  were  exceptional,  yet  natural 
events,  which  might  have  occurred  in  the  history  of  any 
nomadic  people,  but  became  exaggerated  through  the  national 
vanity  of  the  Jews  into  divine  interpositions.  Korah,  Dathan 
and  Abiram  were  swallowed  up  by  an  opportune  earthquake 
or  caught  in  a  prepared  pit-fall.  The  legal  terrors  of  Mount 
Sinai  arose  from  a  passing  storm  of  thunder  and  lightning, 
which  fittingly  illuminated  the  face  of  the  lawgiver  in  the  view 
of  the  awe-struck  Israelites.  And  the  later  physical  miracles 
of  Jesus  were  but  feats  of  magic  or  extraordinary  phenomena, 
afterwards  embellished  by  the  Messianic  fancy  of  His  followers. 
The  stilling  of  the  tempest  was  only  a  sudden  calm  on  round- 
ing a  head-land.  The  water  made  wine  had  occult  vinous 
properties,  or  may  have  been  simply  a  private  wedding  present 
to  surprise  the  guests.  The  draught  of  fishes  was  due  to  a 
passing  shoal.  The  loaves  in  five  baskets  were  multiplied  by 
magic  or  only  tasted  as  in  a  sacrament.  The  tribute  money 
was  simply  the  proceeds  of  Peter's  fishing.     The  disciples  in 


4o8  Scepticism  in  Anthropology.  [part  i. 

the  midnight  storm  perceived  Jesus  but  indistinctly  as  He 
waded  in  the  shallows  or  walked  upon  the  shore,  to  which  He 
easily  lifted  the  too  venturesome  apostle.  The  cursed  fig- 
tree  was  blighted  by  an  oriental  sun.  Even  the  awful  prodi- 
gies of  the  crucifixion  did  not  exceed  those  of  an  ordinary 
eclipse  and  earthquake.  And  the  magnificent  descriptions  of 
the  future  destruction  and  renovation  of  the  material  earth 
were  but  the  glowing  language  of  political  prophecy,  in  refer- 
ence to  the  downfall  of  Jerusalem  and  other  anti-christian 
powers  and  kingdoms. 

Scepticism  in  Anthropology. 

The  biblical  anthropology  has  begun  to  fall  under  the  same 
destructive  criticism.  Since  the  standard  illustrations  of  the 
divine  benevolence  afforded  by  the  animal  and  human  body 
have  been  found  faulty  in  some  of  their  details,  doubts  are 
thrown  upon  the  whole  teleological  argument  in  the  name  of 
science.  It  is  objected  to  such  reasoning  that  all  animate 
nature  is  full  of  defective  and  malevolent  contrivance. 
Cuvier  confessed  himself  doubtful  as  to  the  advantageous 
structure  of  the  sloth  which,  though  a  vertebrate  animal,  is 
incapable  of  walking.  Buffon  declared  that  he  could  see  no 
marks  of  divine  wisdom  in  the  hump  of  the  camel.  Geoffrey 
St.  Hilaire  refused  to  ascribe  good  intentions,  short  methods, 
and  best  ends  to  Nature  as  an  intelligent  being,  and  likened 
the  doctrine  of  prospective  contrivances  and  compensations  in 
the  animal  world  to  the  absurdity  of  supposing  that  a  man 
with  crutches  had  been  predestined  to  a  paralyzed  or  ampu- 
tated leg.  Professor  Helmholtz  has  said  that  he  would  return 
to  any  good  optician  an  instrument  as  imperfect  as  the  human 
eye.  Many  naturalists  are  so  impressed  by  the  anatomical 
likeness  of  man  to  the  anthropoid  apes  that  they  hesitate  to 
class  him  as  a  distinct  species,  made  in  the  divine  image,  and 
set  over  the  animal  kingdom.  And  some  divines,  in  their 
desperate  perplexity  at  such  resemblances,  have  been  ready  to 
persuade  themselves  that  the  monkey,  instead  of  being  an 
original  divine  creation,  is  but  a  subsequent  Satanic  caricature 
of  humanity.  Paley  has  admitted  that  diseased  and  monstrous 
organisms,  poisonous    serpents,  and  beasts  of  prey,  though 


CHAP,  v.]  Scepticism  in  Anthropology.  409 

they  may  suggest  an  intelligent  Creator,  can  prove  nothing  as 
to  His  wisdom  and  goodness ;  and  he  labors  to  show  how  the 
pain  and  cruelty  which  disfigure  the  animal  creation,  as  well 
as  the  evils  of  sickness,  age,  and  death  to  which  man  is  sub- 
ject, are  nevertheless  alleviated  and  compensated  in  the 
general  economy  of  nature.  And  Tennyson,  after  confronting 
his  sceptic  with  such  anomalies,  can  only  make  him  in- 
stinctively protest  against  them  as  one 

''  ^\^lo  trusted  God  was  love  indeed, 
And  love  creation's  final  law, 
Though  Nature,  red  in  tooth  and  claw 
With  ravine,  shrieked  against  his  creed." 

The  literal  story  of  the  creation  and  fall  of  Adam  has 
already  been  abandoned  by  many  exegetical  scholars,  and 
treated  as  a  mere  sacred  myth  or  allegory.  Philo,  Origen, 
and  the  Alexandrian  Platonists  have  come  again  in  modern 
critics,  who  sacrifice  the  historical  to  an  infused  dogmatic  or 
philosophic  sense.  According  to  Eichorn  and  Paulus  its 
whole  design  was  to  paint  the  loss  of  the  golden  age,  of  which 
traditions  linger  among  all  nations.  In  the  serpent  which 
tempted  Eve,  Rothe,  Steffens,  and  Martensen  have  perceived 
only  an  emblem  or  ideal  personification  of  sensual  appetite,  of 
pre-existent  sinfulness,  of  the  adverse  cosmical  principle  of 
nature,  or  a  mere  rhetorical  figure  of  Satan.  The  tree  of  good 
and  evil  was  a  symbol  of  probation,  and  by  its  intoxicating 
fruit  represents  the  evil  effects  of  pruriency  and  lust.  The 
more  idealizing  interpreters,  such  as  Kant,  Ammon,  and 
Hegel,  denying  the  doctrine  of  original  sin,  can  perceive 
nothing  but  a  poetical- description  of  the  advance  of  man  from 
savage  beastliness  to  rational  freedom,  at  the  calamitous  cost 
attending  all  knowledge.  And  there  are  still  others,  such 
as  Professor  Jowett,  who,  having  accepted  the  new  theories 
of  animal  and  human  evolution,  are  ready  to  surrender  the 
whole  dogmatic  as  well  as  historic  sense  of  the  narrative,  and 
reduce  it  to  a  level  with  the  myths  of  Prometheus  and  Pandora. 

The  anthropological  miracles  of  the  Bible,  under  the  same 

sceptical  treatment,  have  vanished  into  ordinary  ethnical  and 

physical  phenomena.    According  to  the  naturalistic  critics,  the 

tower  of  Babel,  if  anything  more  than  an  allegorical  picture 

3B 


410  Scepticism  in  Psychology.  [part  i. 

of  the  origin  of  languages  and  nations,  was  but  the  seat  of  an 
ancient  Gentile  empire,  out  of  whose  anarchy  the  Jews  had 
escaped.  The  counterpart  gift  of  tongues  and  fusion  of 
peoples  at  Pentecost  had  no  other  foundation  than  the  simul- 
taneous use  by  the  excited  apostles  of  a  few  neighboring 
dialects,  under  flickering  lamps,  in  the  midst  of  a  whirlwind. 
The  incarnation  of  Christ  as  the  Second  Adam  was  a  natural 
birth,  subsequently  embelhshed  by  His  enthusiastic  followers, 
after  the  Jewish  hero-type,  with  visions,  trances,  voices,  and 
"apparitions.  A  dove  passing  at  the  moment  of  His  baptism 
was  accepted  as  an  omen  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  His  numerous 
miracles  of  healing,  so  far  as  genuine  cures,  were  performed 
upon  nervous  patients  by  a  peculiar  medical  skill  like  that  of 
clairvoyance  and  mesmerism.  The  dead  raised  to  life  had 
been  cases  of  suspended  animation  or  premature  inter- 
ment. A  sudden  effect  of  sunrise  upon  Mount  Tabor,  as  He 
stood  against  the  sky  conversing  with  two  of  His  apostles,  was 
construed  by  the  drowsy  disciples  below  into  His  transfigura- 
tion. His  resurrection  was  the  recovery  from  a  trance  through 
the  stimulating  effects  of  the  spices,  and  was  necessarily  kept 
secret  by  a  few  faithful  followers.  Even  His  ascension  was 
only  a  mysterious  disappearance  in  the  sunset-clouds  of  the 
mountain-top,  suggesting  to  the  beholders  the  translation  of 
Enoch  and  Elijah.  And  His  predicted  kingdom,  with  the 
earth  restored  to  a  paradise,  and  the  whole  race  in  a  state  of 
peace  and  innocence,  is  no  more  than  a  consequent  prognostic 
of  the  Messianic  fancy. 

The  physical  sciences,  as  thus  deprived  of  their  biblical 
portions  of  truth,  would  leave  us  simply  an  astronomy  with- 
out a  Father  in  heaven,  a  geology  without  a  Creator  of  the 
earth,  and  an  anthropology  without  the  divine  image. 

(  ^. 

Scepticism  in  Psychology. 

We  may  also  meet  groups  of  the  same  timid  sceptics  in 
each  of  the  psychical  sciences,  ready  to  quail  at  every  infidel 
doubt  and  yield  up  every  apologetic  defence,  like  traitorous 
cowards  who  spike  the  guns  of  their  fortress  on  the  most  dis- 
tant menace  of  the  enemy. 

The   biblical   psychology   had    scarcely  been    constructed 


CHAP,  v.]  Scepticism  in  Psychology.  411 

before  it  was  thus  surrendered.  The  theistic  proofs  of  Des- 
cartes and  Samuel  Clarke,  claiming  external  reality  for  the 
internal  idea  of  a  Perfect  Being,  were  set  aside  as  speculative, 
vague  and  unscientific;  not  more  absurd,  according  to  Kant, 
than  if  one  should  fancy  he  possessed  a  hundred  crowns 
because  he  could  conceive  of  them.  It  was  denied  that  any 
innate  idea  of  God  can  be  found  in  untutored  savages  and 
unsophisticated  children.  The  traces  of  divine  benevolence 
in  the  aesthetic  sense  of  beauty  in  nature  and  art  have  been 
obscured  by  resolving  that  faculty  into  a  mere  inheritance  of 
pagan  culture,  or  describing  it  as  a  capacity  for  exquisite  pain 
as  well  as  pleasure.  Of  the  lauded  rewards  of  virtue,  Burke 
declared  they  werfe  treated  like  make-weights  in  scales  hun;j 
in  a  shop  of  horrors  for  weighing  so  much  actual  crime 
against  so  much  contingent  advantage.  Even  the  moral  proof 
of  a  God,  for  which  Kant  would  capitulate  after  surrender- 
ing all  the  rest,  has  been  betrayed  by  ethical  writers  who  have 
made  conscience  a  mere  habit  or  tradition,  so  worthless  as  to 
have  suggested  in  heathen  minds  divine  lawgivers  who  coun- 
tenanced murder,  lust  and  pillage.  It  is  openly  discussed  in 
the  "Nineteenth  Century,"  whether  there  can  be  any  base  or 
germ  of  morality  outside  of  the  Christian  ethics.  And  all 
the  time-worn  paradoxes  of  mental  science  are  the  while 
paraded  to  the  scandal  of  the  unbeliever.  Milton  would  seem 
to  have  ironically  included  them  among  the  dismal  pastimes 
of  fallen  spirits  as  they  sat  apart  on  a  hill  retired, 

— "  and  reason' d  high 
Of  providence,  foreknowledge,  will  and  fate, 
Fixed  fate^  free-will,  foreknowledge  absolute; 
And  found  no  end  in  wand'ring  mazes  lost." 

Pascal,  in  his  thoughts  upon  the  grandeur  and  misery  of  man, 
depicted  him  as  but  a  conscious  enigma,  unable  to  conceive 
of  matter,  unable  to  conceive  of  spirit,  and  yet  forced  to  con- 
ceive of  both  as  united  in  himself;  a  depositoiy  of  the  truth, 
and  yet  a  medley  of  uncertainties;  a  judge  of  all  things,  and 
yet  a  worm  of  the  dust;  an  incomprehensible  monster;  the 
glory  and  the  scandal  of  the  universe.  In  our  own  materi- 
alistic era,  devout  thinkers  are  questioning  anew  the  cumula- 
tive proofs  of  immortality.     And  Poetry  itself,  in  the  great 


412  Scepticism  in  Psychology.  [parti. 

elegiac  of  the  time,  after  voicing  all  the  varied  hopes  and 
fears  of  the  bereaved  heart,  can  only  leave  it  to  its  own 
baffled  yearnings, 

"  An  infant  crying  in  the  night, 

An  infant  crying  for  the  light, 

And  with  no  language  but  a  cry." 

The  doctrines  of  grace  in  the  soul  have  been  losing  their 
saintly  halo  in  the  gairish  day  of  modern  thought.  Regene- 
ration, justification,  and  sanctification,  faith,  repentance  and 
joy  in  the  Holy  Ghost,  all  the  divine  acts  and  supernatural 
exercises,  have  been  evaporated  into  mere  aesthetic  fancies, 
moral  duties,  and  logical  abstractions.  According  to  the 
German  speculative  divines,  Schleiermacher,  De  Wette,  and 
Marheineke,  religion  consists  in  the  sentiment  of  the  Infinite, 
the  perception  of  the  Divine,  the  knowledge,  of  the  Absolute. 
We  are  regenerated  by  participating  in  the  human-divine  life 
of  Christ  as  still  incarnate  in  the  Church;  we  may  be  justified 
by  our  own  penitent  acts ;  we  can  only  become  immortal  by 
losing  our  individuality  in  the  eternal  and  the  universal ;  and 
we  are  to  be.  glorified  through  the  expansion  and  dissolution 
of  our  finite  consciousness  in  the  infinite  consciousness  of 
God.  According  to  the  Anglican  Platonists,  Maurice,  Kings- 
ley  and  Jowett,  the  true  Christ  is  already  latent  in  every  human 
being;  all  men  are  children  of  God  and  heirs  of  the  kingdom 
of  heaven;  conversion  is  the  spontaneous  development  of  the 
Christian  life;  and  the  new-birth  as  a  supernatural  change  is 
a  mere  fancy  of  the  ecstatic  apostles  which  the  Church  has 
since  wrought  into  a  dogma.  American  Unitarian  divines, 
such  as  Hedge,  Farley  and  Bellows,  have  re-stated  and 
defined  the  same  doctrines  in  somewhat  similar  terms ;  and 
in  many  orthodox  pulpits  they  are  no  longer  held  forth  with 
the  uncompromising  rigor  of  a  former  age. 

The  psychological  miracles  of  Scripture  arc  waning  before 
the  dawn  of  science  into  the  most  familiar  mental  phenomena. 
The  Psalms,  Prophecies,  Gospels  and  Epistles  are  treated  as 
but  the  inspirations  of  devout  genius.  The  demoniacs  were 
mere  religious  madmen  who  could  only  be  cured  through 
their  own  hallucinations,  as  when  the  Gadarene  was  permitted 
to  believe  that  he  saw  a  herd  of  possessed  swine  rushing 


CHAP,  v.]  Scepticism  in  Sociology.  4 1 3 

down  into  the  sea.  The  Witch  of  Endor  and  the  damsel  at 
Ephesus  simply  imposed  upon  their  cotemporaries  like 
many  a  vulgar  impostor  since.  The  conversion  of  St.  Paul 
occurred  in  a  thunder-storm,  by  which  he  was  struck  blind 
to  the  earth  with  a  mental  image  of  Christ  seemingly  pro- 
jected in  the  sky.  His  visit  to  Paradise  was  a  sacred  trance. 
The  miracles  of  the  apostles  were  wrought  through  the  cre- 
dulity of  the  populace.  The  supernatural  gifts  of  the  Spirit 
were  exceptional  endowments  or  the  morbid  phenomena  of 
religious  excitement.  And  all  the  apparitions,  suggestions, 
and  influences  of  angels  and  saints,  in  the  early  or  modern 
church,  are  to  be  ranked  with  the  ghost- stories  of  a  village 
fire-side. 

Scepticism  in  Sociology. 

The  biblical  sociology  might  almost  be  said  to  have  been 
abandoned  without  a  blow.  Few  attempts  have  been  made 
to  harmonize  it  with  the  modern  science  of  civilization.  The 
great  historical  proof  of  an  intelligent  and  moral  Governor  of 
mankind,  derived  from  the  consent  of  nations  and  ages,  is 
rejected  as  obscure,  contradictory  and  misleading.  It  is 
doubted  whether  the  devil-worship  of  savage  tribes  or  the 
gross  mythologies  of  more  cultivated  peoples,  can  corrobo- 
rate the  pure  theism  of  the  Hebrew  and  Christian  theocracy. 
The  alleged  marks  of  divine  goodness  in  the  social  constitu- 
tion are  questioned  in  view  of  the  distressing  inequalities  of 
poverty  and  wealth,  vice  and  virtue,  grandeur  and  meanness, 
which  Paley  and  Chalmers  have  striven  to  palliate  and  explain. 
'Doubts  are  thrown  upon  the  general  moral  sense  or  public 
conscience  for  which  Butler  pleaded  as  a  proof  of  the  divine 
justice,  when  it  is  seen  how  often  the  world  has  applauded 
successfu"!  villainy  and  persecuted  its  best  benefactors.  And 
in  the  wide  realm  of  universal  history,  it  is  still  debated, 
whether  the  notion  of  final  cause  or  design  can  even  be 
admitted.  Bacon  speaks  of  deserts  in  history  as  in  nature, 
like  the  long,  dreary  interval  of  the  dark  ages,  for  which  no 
adequate  cause  can  be  assigned.  Hegel  has  no  room  in  his 
philosophy  for  unhistorical  nations  and  races,  that  have  been 
cast  off  as  mere  dross  in  the  process  of  refining  that  absolute 


414  Scepticism  in  Sociology.  [part  i. 

reason  which  is  yet  to  govern  the  world.  And  it  is  seen  that 
sacred  historians,  hke  Bossuet  and  Prideaux,  are  obhged  to 
leave  out  of  their  scheme  of  universal  Providence,  vast  por- 
tions of  mankind  which  have  played  no  part  in  its  develop- 
ment, whole  civilizations  in  Western  Asia  and  South  America 
which  have  long  since  perished,  like  ships  at  sea,  with  scarce 
a  wreck  to  tell  the  tale.  Even  those  who  admit  special  divine 
purpose  in  social  phenomena  are  soon  perplexed  with  worse 
anomalies  than  the  serpents  and  monsters,  the  pestilences  and 
tornados  which  mar  the  face  of  physical  nature,  in  the  mon- 
sters of  cruelty  that  have  scourged  mankind,  in  the  massacre 
of  St.  Bartholomew,  the  fall  of  Poland,  and  the  great  unexpi- 
ated  crimes  of  history. 

"  If  plagues  or  earthquakes  break  not  heaven's  design, 
Why  then  a  Borgia  or  a  Catiline  ?  " 

And  after  all  that  has  been  written  by  enthusiastic  dreamers 
in  favor  of  human  progress  and  perfectibility,  there  are  less 
sanguine  observers  to  whom  the  utter  destruction  of  the 
whole  existing  civilization  in  some  vast  political  convulsion 
or  planetary  disturbance  would  seem  no  more  incredible 
than  the  bursting  of  a  bubble  or  the  blighting  of  a  flower. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Church  as  a  divine  institution  has 
been  pared  down  to  the  baldest  rationalistic  socialism. 
Its  polity,  worship,  sacraments,  all  its  supernatural  means  of 
grace,  are  merged  and  lost  in  mere  moral  and  political  ideals. 
As  variously  defined  by  the  German  rationalists,  it  is  an 
organization  of  the  theanthropic  life  of  Christ,  or  a  growing 
Christian  republic,  or  a  society  for  the  promotion  of  natural 
religion  and  virtue.  Its  sacraments  are  mere  didactic  emblems  ' 
and  badges  of  universal  brotherhood.  In  the  system  of  the 
English  rationalists  the  Church  is  the  expansion  of  the  family 
and  national  principle,  or  the  world  under  a  religious  aspect, 
or  the  State  in  a  Christian  form.  Baptism  merely  affirms  the 
fact  that  men  are  God's  children  and  new  creatures  in  Christ ; 
the  Priest  simply  celebrates  the  great  sacrifice  made  once  for 
all  and  declares  a  universal  absolution  ;  and  daily  services,  fre- 
quent communions,  commemorations  of  saints  and  martyrs, 
and  religious  orders  are  to  be  prized  only  as  aids  and  sanc- 
tions of  our  common  Christian  life.     Even  within  the  bosom 


CHAP,  v.]  Scepticism  in  Tlicology.  415 

of  orthodox  American  communions  scarcely  less  rationalistic 
conceptions  may  be  found  in  many  members,  who  treat  the 
Church  as  a  temporary  convenience,  the  ministry  as  a  class 
of  moral  teachers  with  no  exclusive  function,  public  worship 
as  an  extemporaneous  performance,  and  holy  ordinances  as 
useless  forms. 

The  political  miracles  of  the  Bible,  under  the  scientific 
scepticism,  have  been  declining  into  common  social  phe- 
nomena. The  supernatural  judgments  and  deliverances  of 
the  Jewish  theocracy  in  time  of  war,  famine,  and  pestilence, 
were  mere  Providential  events  such  as  still  figure  in  State- 
services  on  days  of  public  humiliation  and  thanksgiving. 
The  angels  that  at  times  have  mingled  in  human  affairs  were 
originally  the  creations  of  Persian  fancy,  and  are  no  more  real 
than  were  the  mistaken  aerial  shadows  of  the  images  on  the 
Cathedral  of  Milan.  The  miraculous  progress  of  the  early 
Church  can  be  explained  by  natural  causes.  As  the  world's 
history  is  the  world's  judgment  and  Christ  has  already  come 
again  in  His  Church,  the  last  grand  assize  is  but  a. dramatic 
vision.  And  the  New  Jerusalem,  descending  from  heaven  to 
earth,  is  but  the  t}'pe  of  a  perfected  Christian  state. 

Scepticism  in  Theology. 

The  biblical  theology  has  been  betrayed  within  the  very 
walls  of  the  citadel.  All  the  great  theistic  arguments  of 
rational  or  metaphysical  theology,  so  carefully  wrought  in  the 
schools,  have  been  exploded,  like  bursting  guns  upon  the 
ramparts,  to  the  derision  of  the  enemy.  It  was  shown  by 
Kant,  Hamilton  and  Mansel  that  the  ontological  proof, 
derived  from  necessary  existence,  would  absurdly  make  our 
thought  the  condition  of  reality;  that  the  cosmological  proof, 
derived  from  contingent  existence,  would  groundlessly  uphold 
the  world  with  our  notion  of  a  cause;  and  that  the  teleological 
proof,  derived  from  natural  order  and  design,  would  weakly 
infer  an  Infinite  Creator  from  a  finite  creation.  Coleridge,  in 
his  day,  deprecated  the  effort  to  represent  the  Deity,  not  only 
as  a  necessary,  but  as  a  necessitated  being,  and  lamented  the 
taste  for  books  of  natural  theology,  physico-theology,  scientific 


4i6  Scepticism  in  Theology.  [part  i. 

evidences  of  Christianity,  as  tending  to  displace  the  worship 
of  Jehovah  for  a  mere  sentimental  adoration  of  Nature ; 

"  A  sense  sublime 
'Of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused, 
Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns, 
And  the  round  ocean  and  the  living  air, 
And  the  blue  sky  and  the  deep  heart  of  man." 

The  moral  theology,  as  we  have  seen,  has  fared  no  better. 
Arguments  have  been  written  upon  the  atheistic  tendency  of 
Butler's  Analogy.  Pitt  is  said  to  have  acknowledged  that  it 
raised  more  doubts  in  his  mind  than  it  ever  solved.  And  the 
new  comparative  theology  would  seem  to  have  been  already 
left  like  a  deserted  field-piece,  in  the  hands  of  infidels,  by 
apologists  who  have  given  up  all  paganism  as  a  mere  abortive 
growth  of  original  sin  or  a  diabolical  caricature  of  Christianity. 
Or  if  a  few  divines  have  been  striving  to  re-capture  the  lost 
munition,  it  is  only  to  turn  it  against  their  own  works,  by- 
lowering  Christianity  as  much  as  they  are  lifting  heathenism 
in  the  scale  of  true  religion.  There  is,  in  fact,  not  a  point  of 
contact  between  the  scientific  and  the  biblical  theology 
which  has  not  been  unwarily  and  sometimes  ignominiously 
abandoned. 

All  the  pecuhar  doctrines  of  revealed  religion,  the  high 
mysteries  of  the  Trinity,  the  incarnation,  the  atonement,  have 
been  stript  of  their  divine  splendor  by  a  rationalistic  speculation, 
and  bleached  into  the  most  colorless  metaphysical  abstractions. 
The  German  speculative  theologians,  who  are  disciples  of 
Fichte,  Schelling  and  Hegel,  have  sought  the  Trinity  in  a  mere 
successive,  historical  manifestation  of  the  Creator,  Saviour  and 
Sanctifier  of  mankind,  or  in  the  objective,  subjective  and  cor- 
relate phases  of  the  infinite  consciousness,  or  in  the  triplicity 
of  the  dialectic  process.  The  incarnation  is  treated  as  but  the 
continuous  embodiment  of  the  Divine  Word,  or  Eternal  Son  of 
God,  in  the  human  race,  and  the  atonement  as  the  reconcilia- 
tion of  the  finite  reason  with  the  Infinite  Reason,  the  union  of 
the  human  with  the  divine  in  the  development  of  the  Absolute. 
The  English  clergymen,  who  have  been  restoring  Plato  and 
Philo,  have  represented  the  second  person  of  the  Trinity  as 
the    Logos   or  Divine  reason,  manifested  fully  in  the   man 


CHAP,  v.]  Scepticism  in  Theology.  417 

Jesus,  but  still  potential  in  every  human  being ;  and  the 
atonement,  according  to  its  literal  meaning,  as  the  process  of 
becoming  at-one  with  God.  And  American  divines,  both  in 
and  out  of  the  Unitarian  Church,  are  advocating,  more  or  less 
knowingly,  systems  of  mere  natural  religion,  and  couching 
them  in  Scripture  phrases  and  orthodox  forms. 

All  the  miraculous  evidences  of  Christianity,  its  divine 
insignia  among  the  other  religions  of  the  world,  have  been 
gradually,  by  a  scientific  biblical  criticism,  degraded  into  mere 
sacred  myths  and  legends.  First  came  the  early  rationalistic 
interpreters,  such  as  Ernesti,  Semler,  and  Michaelis,  studying 
the  Bible  as  they  would  Homer  or  Livy,  in  the  light  of  contem- 
poraneous history,  and  treating  its  miracles  as  popular  super- 
stitions to  which  Moses  and  Christ  had  accommodated  their 
teachings  in  a  rude  age  of  the  world.  Then  followed  the 
naturalistic  critics,  such  ■  as  Eichorn  and  Paulus,  ingeniously 
explaining  the  supernatural  events  of  the  sacred  history  as 
fiction  founded  on  fact,  mere  extraordinary  or  even  common 
occurrences  which  had  been  embellished  by  the  excited  senses 
and  imagination  of  the  spectators  and  historians  of  the  time, 
like  the  exploits  of  Achilles  and  the  adventures  of  Romulus. 
At  length  appeared  the  strictly  mythological  exegetes,  such 
as  De  Wette,  Gabler  and  Bauer,  finding  philosophic  as  well  as 
historic  myths  successively  in  the  Old  and  the  New  Testa- 
ment, unconscious  inventions  of  facts  in  accordance  with 
traditional  ideas,  spontaneous  creations  of  the  Messianic 
fancy,  then  universally  credited,  no  more  actual  than  the 
story  of  Apollo  or  the  feats  of  Hercules.  At  the  same  time, 
there  had  been  growing  up  an  idealistic  philosophy  from 
Kant  to  Hegel,  which  stood  ready,  after  the  manner  of  the 
classic  mythologists,  to  infuse  its  ideas  into  the  Christian 
myths  as  their  hidden  meaning  and  only  essential  truth, 
somewhat  as  Bacon,  Schelling  and  Miiller  had  already  philo- 
sophically interpreted  the  Greek  and  Roman  fables.  All 
things  seemed  thus  conspiring  to  one  result.  A  point  had 
been  reached  where  German  pantheists  could  unite  with 
English  deists  and  French  infidels  in  attacking,  from  different 
quarters,  the  entire  historical  truth  of  the  Gospel.  Woolaston, 
Bolingbroke,  Voltaire,  Reimarus  and  Lessing  might  be  made 
3C 


41 8  Sceptical  Religious  Philosophy.  [parti. 

to  join  hands  with  learned  theologians  and  professed  defenders 
of  the  faith.  And  it  was  then  that  the  stealthy  treason  was 
unmasked  by  a  young  divine,  since  known  as  the  infidel  Dr. 
Strauss,  of  whom  it  has  been  said  that  he  collected  all  the 
various  doubts  with  which  the  historic  Christ  had  ever  been 
assailed  and  tore  away  the  metaphysical  veil  that  screened 
them  from  popular  view,  as  Antony  lifted  the  robe  of  Caesar 
and  showed  the  wounds  which  each  conspirator  had  inflicted 
in  the  dark.  Henceforth,  Christianity  was  to  be  accepted  not 
as  a  sheer  imposture,  nor  yet  as  a  true  history,  but  simply  as 
a  gorgeous  mythology  which  has  descended  to  us  from  the 
twilight  eras  of  time,  gathering  in  its  train  the  gray-haired 
patriarchs,  priests  and  prophets,  the  divine  Messiah  and 
Apostles,  the  holy  fathers,  martyrs  and  doctors,  and  yet  ever 
bearing  within  its  bosom  those  eternal  truths  by  which  the 
saint  and  the  philosopher  alike  must  live. 

The  psychical  sciences,  as  thus  robbed  of  their  biblical  por- 
tions by  the  sceptical  spirit,  would  leave  us  only  a  psychology 
without  the  Christian  virtues  and  graces,  a  sociology  without 
Providence  and  the  Church,  and  a  theology  without  Jehovah 
and  without  Christ. 

Sceptical  Religious  Philosophy. 

At  length  we  may  meet  our  religious  sceptic  on  the  heights 
of  philosophy  returning  from  his  survey  of  the  sciences  only 
to  escape  their  controversies  and  proclaim  their  failures  in 
some  hopeless  theory  of  knowledge,  like  the  spies  who 
brought  back  an  evil  report  of  the  giants  of  Canaan. 

At  one  time,  he  is  ready  to  abandon  reason  for  the  sake  of 
revelation.  That  only  apologetic  weapon  with  which  to 
defend  the  Divine  Word  is  made  to  explode  in  his  hands. 
The  finitude,  the  inconsistency,  the  weakness  and  the  depra- 
vity of  the  human  intellect  are  magnified  until  truth  is  lost 
in  paradox  and  faith  vanishes  in  doubt.  It  was  thus  that 
Bossuet,  in  his  "Variations  of  Protestantism,"  would  have 
disgusted  the  emancipated  reason  with  its  errors  and  driven 
it  back  to  the  chair  of  infallibility  by  what  Turrettin  styled  a 
sort  of  "Papal  Pyrrhonism."  It  was  thus  that  Huet  sought 
his  "Evangelical  Demonstration"  in  the  impotence  of  that 


CHAP,  v]  Sceptical  Religious  Philosophy.  419 

very  human  understanding  to  which  he  appealed,  and  Pascal 
would  have  reared  his  projected  apology  for  the  Christian 
Faith  upon  a  Cartesian  basis  of  universal  doubt.  It  was  thus 
that  Glenville,  in  his  "  Scientific  Scepticism,"  inveighed  against 
all  intuition  of  causes,  all  real  knowledge  as  vain  uncertainty 
and  impious  pretension,  and  Berkeley,  whilst  inquiring  into 
the  chief  sources  of  error  and  difficulty  in  the  sciences,  laid 
the  train  through  which  Hume  undermined  the  very  founda- 
tions of  knowledge,  both  divine  and  human.  It  is  thus,  too, 
in  our  own  time,  that  Hamilton  has  arrayed  the  heroes  of 
faith  as  martyrs  of  doubt  at  the  grave  of  philosophy,  and  fur- 
nished Mansel  with  such  narrow  "Limits  of  Religious 
Thought"  that  he  would  have  proved  a  revelation  all  but 
impossible  by  showing  a  God  to  be  inconceivable.  And  the 
age  is  still  full  of  brave,  despairing  thinkers,  who  are  practi- 
cally swayed  by  the  same  principle;  gentle  sceptics,  who 
after  pursuing  through  the  schools  the  various  speculative 
theogonies  in  which  philosophy  has  striven  to  swallow  up 
theology,  have  become  appalled  at  her  profane  attempt  to 
unfold  the  enigma  of  the  universe  by  mere  logical  process, 
and  fled  for  refuge  to  some  easy  creed  of  paradoxes  retaining 
the  mass  of  truths  in  a  state  of  simple  contradiction;  the 
Schlegels,  the  Newmans,  the  Brownsons,  the  Walworths, 
who  with  Father  Stone  have  heeded  the  voice  of  the  unerring 
Chief  Pastor,  and  sought  repose  from  doubt  on  the  bosom 
of  Holy  Mother  Church. 

At  another  time,  however,  the  religious  sceptic  seems  ready 
to  abandon  revelation  for  the  sake  of  reason.  That  only  infal- 
lible word  of  God  is  prejudged  and  forestalled  by  its  own  pro- 
fessed pupil.  Its  normal  limits,  its  concurrent  evidences,  its 
supreme  authority  are  questioned  and  diminished,  until  mere 
human  reason  is  left  as  the  sole  arbiter  of  truth  and  judge  of 
controversy.  In  this  spirit,  Kant  prescribed  as  the  only  legi- 
timate topic  of  inspiration  a  species  of  moral  religion  which 
he  could  find  within  the  bounds  of  the  pure  reason ;  and 
Fichte  attempted  a  "  Criticism  of  all  Revelation"  which  would 
have  arbitrarily  predetermined  its  whole  method,  spirit,  and 
contents  ;  and  Rohr  and  Wegscheider  made  the  moral  reason 
or  mere  human  conscience  the  supreme  judge  of  what  God 


420  Sceptical  Religions  Philosophy.  [part  i. 

should  teach  to  man.  In  this  spirit,  Paley  magnified  the 
miracles  at  the  expense  of  the  doctrines,  and  Coleridge 
exalted  the  doctrines  over  the  miracles,  as  insignia  of  the 
Divine  Word,  until  both  evidential  schools,  as  led  by  Mansel 
and  Jowett,  became  involved  in  doubt  and  suspicion,  like  a 
divided  army  wrangling  in  front  of  the  enemy.  In  this  spirit, 
too,  a  long  line  of  biblical  critics,  from  Semler  to  Colenzo, 
with  their  free  discussion  upon  the  Canon,  have  been  exscind- 
ing one  sacred  book  after  another,  from  Genesis  to  the  Apoc- 
alypse, as  too  unedifying,  inconsistent,  puerile,  to  have  come 
from  the  supposed  Divine  Author,  or  alleged  human  writers. 
And  in  this  spirit,  at  length,  the  sovereign  authority  of  Scrip- 
ture itself,  as  expressed  in  the  creeds  and  canons  of  the  Church, 
is  perversely  evaded  or  openly  defied  from  the  throne  of  the 
bishop,  the  pulpit  of  the  preacher,  and  the  chair  of  the  divine. 
On  all  sides  are  restless  spirits  breaking  away  from  the  ancient 
moorings  of  faith  ;  bold,  but  rash  seekers  of  truth  who,  having 
been  long  familiar  with  those  mystic  theodiceas  by  which 
theology  has  but  played  at  philosophy,  at  last  become  dis- 
gusted with  her  fond  effort  to  array  the  universe  as  a  mere 
dogmatic  marvel,  and  lapse  to  some  bald  creed  of  negations, 
containing  in  itself  the  merest  fragment  of  truth ;  a  Francis 
Newman,  a  Theodore  Parker,  a  David  Strauss,  passing 
through  all  the  phases  of  faith,  with  but  a  brief  suspense  in 
doubt,  to  the  total  eclipse  of  unbelief 

The  philosophic  system  issuing  from  such  religious  scepti- 
cism, if  system  it  can  be  called,  simply  sacrifices  the  biblical 
to  the  scientific  portions  of  knowledge,  or  retains  them  both 
in  hopeless  contradiction.  From  the  day  that  Schleiermacher 
reported  the  distant  advance  of  science  as  a  new  assailant  of 
the  Bible,  and  himself  proposed  to  abandon  the  outworks  in 
Genesis  and  flee  into  the  open  field  of  history,  the  shameful 
policy  of  surrender  and  retreat  has  gone  on,  until  the  crisis 
which  he  predicted  would  seem  to  have  come,  when  such 
apologists  must  choose  between  deserting  to  the  enemy  or 
being  ceremoniously  interred  in  their  own  fortifications. 
Some  English  thinkers  have  certainly  reached  that  juncture. 
The  gifted  Miss  Cobbe,  in  her  "  Broken  Lights,"  admits  that 
for  the  extreme  Broad  Church,  whenever  the  Bible  contra- 


CHAP,  v.]  Sceptical  Religious  Pliilosophy.  421 

diets  Science,  there  is  no  alternative  but  the  sacrifice  of  bibh- 
cal  infaUibihty.  Baden  Powell  and  Jowett  have  already  given 
up  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  in  order  to  save  the  Christian,  as  if 
(said  Mendelssohn,  when  advised  to  recant  Judaism  for  Chris- 
tianity) one  should  flee  into  the  second  story  while  the  first  is 
in  flames.  The  Rev.  Stanley  T.  Gibson,  in  his  work  on 
"  Religion  and  Science,"  maintains  that  the  real  schism 
between  them  is  in  the  still  more  fundamental  region  of 
natural  theology,  where  he  unsettles  the  supporting  argu- 
ments of  Paley  and  Butler,  concerning  the  wisdom  and  good- 
ness of  the  Creator.  The  Rev.  T.  W.  Fowle,  in  his  "  Recon- 
ciliation of  Religion  and  Science,"  maintains  that  all  the 
methods,  dogmas  and  creeds  of  Christianity  must  pass  under 
the  yoke  of  scientific  inquiry  and  continue  to  exist  only  so  far 
as  science  permits  and  approves,  and  that  with  the  death  of 
the  old  theology  will  begin  the  new  religion.  The  Duke  of 
Somerset,  in  his  "  Christian  Theology  and  Modern  Scepticism," 
has  sought  to  expose  the  human  elements  of  error  which  in 
the  course  of  ages  have  become  mixed  with  the  whole  doctrinal 
system  of  Christianity,  and  maintains  that  it  is  waning  before 
some  better  day,  when  the  sectarian  bodies  and  lower  orders 
shall  have  participated  in  the  religious  culture  of  the  higher 
classes.  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  in  his  treatise  on  "  Literature 
and  Dogma,"  avers  that  already  the  whole  existing  theologi- 
cal interpretation  of  the  Bible  is  but  a  tradition  of  the  clergy, 
which  has  lost  its  hold  upon  the  people,  and  that  a  better 
apprehension  of  it  can  only  be  gained  by  means  of  that  large, 
generous  culture  which  shall  concentrate  upon  it  the  best 
thoughts  of  the  best  minds  in  all  time,  and  thus  unfold  its 
only  essential  and  universal  truths. 

The  French,  the  Swiss,  the  Dutch  schools  of  religious 
scepticism  are  but  repeating  the  same  strain  with  variations. 
Numerous  American  authors  of  essays,  sermons  and  reviews 
on  the  relations  of  Science  and  Revelation,  are  only  incau- 
tiously beginning  a  new  cycle  with  swifter  movement,  at  the 
outer  rim  of  the  vortex,  by  conceding  that  the  Bible,  in 
which  they  believe,  teaches  physical  errors  in  connection 
with  its  moral  and  spiritual  truths,  as  if  its  ethics  and  theology 
can  be  retained  after  its  astronomy  and  geology  have  been 


422  Sceptical  Religions  Philosophy.  [part  i. 

abandoned.  And  other  more  scientific  investigators  seem 
only  to  perceive  and  announce  the  growing  antagonism, 
while  contributing  but  little  to  the  work  of  harmony.  Dr. 
Draper  has  ably  sketched  the  "  History  of  the  Great  Conflict 
between  Science  and  Religion,"  without  also  retracing  their 
great  alliances,  and  concludes  with  the  hope  that  Reformed 
Christianity  may  yet  be  reconciled  with  advancing  science 
by  carrying  out  the  Lutheran  maxim  of  private  interpreta- 
tion with  absolute  freedom  of  thought.  President  White  has 
omitted  from  his  brilliant  annals  of  the  "Warfare  of  Science" 
any  account  of  the  assaults  upon  religion,  and  in  view  of  the 
fact  that  science  is  destined  to  modify  the  dominant  reli- 
gious conceptions  of  the  world,  suggests  that  influential 
religious  persons  should  make  the  adjustment  as  quietly  and 
speedily  as  possible. 

And  the  dispiriting  effect  of  such  scepticism  is  seen  in  a 
large,  increasing  class  of  speculative  minds  who,  amid  the 
doubt  and  distraction  of  the  age,  have  begun  to  despair  of  any 
intelligent  concurrence  of  reason  and  revelation,  and  to  aban- 
don all  attempts  at  a  logical  organization  of  scientific  and 
biblical  knowledge.  They  are  among  the  finest,  most  cul- 
tured spirits  of  the  time.  Naturally  of  a  reflective  habit,  with 
an  innate  hungering  and  thirsting  after  certain  knowledge,  and 
a  dauntless  spirit  of  research,  which  are  among  the  noblest 
auguries  of  success,  they  have  yearned  after  some  theory  and 
system  which  shall  give  unity  and  form  to  their  fragmentary 
belief  and  information.  In  search  of  this  loved  ideal  they 
traverse  one  after  another  the  different  sciences ;  they  scale 
height  after  height  of  shadowy  speculation ;  they  pass,  with 
patient  initiation,  from  school  to  school  of  philosophy ;  they 
describe  the  whole  circuit  of  vagaries,  by  turns  rejecting  and 
maintaining  the  most  opposite  premises,  and  familiarizing 
themselves  to  the  most  absurd  conclusions,  until  at  length  all 
proper  conditions  of  faith  are  unsettled  in  their  minds.  Grant- 
ing nothing,  denying  nothing,  doubting  everything,  they  have 
lost  that  healthy  appetite  for  realities,  that  wholesome  relish 
for  facts,  which  belonged  to  them  ere  they  had  run  such  a 
course  of  intellectual  dissipation,  and  become  like  the  sated 
voluptuary  with  the  world's  pleasures  palling  upon  his  taste. 


CHAP,  v.]  Effete  Religions  Culture.  433 

A  shade  of  mournful  suspicion  and  disgust  gathers  over  the 
whole  field  of  thought,  lately  so  glowing  with  the  splendors 
of  their  discursive  imagination;  and  there  is  nothing  left  them 
but  the  dirge  of  the  preacher  over  the  weariness  of  study,  the 
multiplicity  of  books,  and  the  vanity  of  all  human  wisdom. 

The  sceptical  philosophy,  which  would  thus  divide  and 
distract  the  body  of  knowledge  by  tearing  its  biblical  from  its 
scientific  members,  can  no  more  prove  itself  the  true  mother 
of  science,  than  could  the  woman  at  the  court  of  Solomon 
make  good  her  right  to  the  child  which  she  was  ready  to 
have  cut  in  twain  before  her  eyes. 

Effete  Religious  Culture, 

At  the  last,  the  sceptical  spirit  may  be  seen  emerging  in 
practical  life  with  a  despairing  view  of  all  the  different  spheres 
of  Christian  civilization,  as  but  like  so  many  once  fair  pro- 
vinces that  have  been  abandoned  to  decay  and  ruin. 

In  the  midst  of  our  boasted  culture,  some  leading  minds 
have  been  discerning  the  signs  of  moral  decrepitude  and 
death.  The  Chevalier  Bunsen  speaks  of  the  novels  of  Victor 
Hugo,  Balzac,  Dumas,  and  Eugene  Sue  as  expressing  the 
despairing  consciousness  of  an  unbelieving  age  which  would 
use  religion  only  as  a  spice  of  fiction;  of  the  modern  opera  as 
clothing  the  spectre  of  despair  in  the  rags  of  mediaeval  piety, 
with  organs  on  the  stage  in  place  of  flutes,  hymns  for  senti- 
mental songs,  processions  of  monks  and  nuns  instead  of 
military  shows ;  and  of  the  rococo  style  in  painting,  which 
would  hypocritically  and  satirically  combine  the  pig-tail  of 
Louis  XV.  with  the  angelic  faces  conceived  by  Giotto  and 
Perugino.  Thomas  Carlyle  would  seem  to  look  upon  all  the 
rapid  movements  of  modern  civilization  as  but  the  rush 
towards  a  "Niagara"  of  ruin;  Mr.  Gregg  even  discerns  the 
"  rocks  ahead  "  in  the  moral,  political,  and  social  perils  of  the 
time;  and  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  imagines  us  already  whelmed 
in  an  "anarchy,"  from  which  only  some  new  form  of  culture 
can  deliver  us.  And  these  voices  of  alarmists  are  but  inter- 
preted by  the  religious  sceptic  as  indications  of  a  general  and 
seated  decay  of  every  great  human  interest. 

He  has  no  faith    in    any   regeneration   of  literature.      He 


424  Effete  Religions  Qdtiire.  [part  i, 

remembers  that  the  revival  of  letters  by  Boccacio  and  Eras- 
mus simply  blended  Pagan  with  Christian  culture,  and  that 
Protestantism  has  ever  since  been  declining  from  its  own 
earlier  literary  models.  The  earnest  believing  ages  which 
produced  the  chaste  fervor  of  the  English  liturgy,  the  solemn 
grandeur  of  the  Paradise  Lost,  the  demure  grace  of  Pilgrim's 
Progress,  the  quaint  saintliness  of  the  Temple,  and  the 
didactic  strains  of  the  Task  and  Night  Thoughts  have  been 
followed  by  the  mocking  scepticism  of  Faust,  the  subtle 
atheism  of  Queen  Mab,  the  defiant  unbelief  of  Cain,  the 
daring  impiety  of  Festus,  the  blasphemous  scoffs  of  Heine, 
and  all  the  irreverent  wit  and  satire  discharged  at  the  godly 
faith  of  purer  days.  If  we  have  had  the  natural  piety  of 
Thomson,  Wordsworth  and  Bryant,  we  now  have  also  the 
gross  naturalism  of  Swinburne,  Walt  Whitman  and  Joachim 
Miller.  And  the  very  muse  of  Christian  devotion  has  begun 
to  trail  her  white  robe  in  the  mire.  That  fastidious  dislike  of 
evangelical  phraseology  which  Foster  and  Chalmers  criticised 
in  men  of  taste  has  become  justified,  in  his  view,  by  a  new 
gospel  of  slang  which  soils  Holy  Scripture  with  impure 
English,  takes  its  text  from  the  newspaper,  draws  its  parables 
from  stale  anecdotes  and  vulgar  incidents  and  admits  the 
colloquial  freedom  of  common  life  into  the  sacred  realm  of 
prayer  and  worship.  It  is  not  in  the  Sunday-school  novel, 
the  proselyting  tract,  the  polemic  treatise,  the  religious  journal, 
that  he  discerns  the  signs  of  any  classical  revival  for  which 
he  may  long,  and  he  can  only  sigh  over  a  former  age  of 
Christian  literature  that  will  never  return. 

As  little  faith  has  he  in  any  religious  regeneration  of  art. 
He  does  not  forget  that  she  was  of  Pagan  rather  than  Chris- 
tian birth;  that  she  ceased  to  be  Grecian  in  becoming  Gothic; 
and  that  then  her  most  splendid  trophies  were  the  dh-ect 
fruit  of  a  religious  system  which  for  three  centuries  has  been 
on  the  wane.  Other  and  grosser  interests  now  claim  the 
wealth,  genius  and  labor  once  so  piously  lavished  upon  the 
magnificent  cathedral  with  its  sacred  treasures  of  painting, 
sculpture,  music  and  oratory.  The  new  aesthetical  Christi- 
anity that  would  reclaim  such  lost  appliances  is  but  decking 
itself  in  borrowed  finery  and  parading  as  a  mere  spectacular 


CHAP,  v.]  Effete  Religious  Culture.  425 

form  what  was  once  only  the  due  artistic  expression  of  an 
earnest  faith.  It  has  no  architects  to  design  its  fit  temple,  no 
painters  to  depict  its  story,  no  sculptors"  to  image  forth 
its  saints,  no  Bernards  and  Massillons  to  give  it  eloquent 
voice.  Even  the  few  simple  graces,  retained  by  the  highest 
Protestant  culture,  have  long  since  widely  degenerated  into  a 
plainer  worship.  The  majestic  liturgy  with  its  solemn  litany 
and  collects,  its  grand  old  chants  and  hallowed  hymns,  has 
given  place  to  the  sensational  sermon  with  a  prelude  of 
wandering  prayers  and  pious  jigs  and  glees.  He  can  find  no 
germs  of  a  new  Christian  art  in  the  rudeness  which  does  not 
crave  it  or  in  the  culture  that  for  the  lack  of  it  is  hopelessly 
reverting  to  pagan  and  papal  ideals  that  belong  only  to  the 
past. 

"  The  famous  orators  have  done, 
The  famous  poets  sung  and  gone. 
The  famous  speculators  thought, 
The  famous  players,  sculptors,  wrought. 
The  famous  painters  filled  their  wall, 
The  famous  critics  judged  it  ail." 

Still  less  faith  has  he  in  any  Christian  element  in  politics. 
He  recalls  the  union  of  the  Church  with  the  State  under 
Constantine,  and  of  the  State  with  the  Church  under  Hilde- 
brand  as  examples  of  the  inevitable  failure  of  all  theocratic 
experiments.  And  the  separate  development  of  Church  and 
State  since  the  Reformation  has  but  wrought  a  breach  in 
modern  society,  which  he  sees  no  method  of  healing.  As  a 
churchman,  he  deplores  the  loss  of  those  ecclesiastical  func- 
tions which  were  designed  to  conserve  and  purify  all  human 
institutions.  As  a  statesman,  he  laments  the  decay  of  public 
virtue  in  high  places,  the  diminished  respect  for  kings  and 
nobles,  the  shameless  corruption  of  republics,  and  the  brute 
ignorance  and  vice  which  soon  pervade  the  purest  democra- 
cies. And  as  a  socialist,  any  youthful  dreams  he  may  have 
cherished  of  a  new  ideal  commonwealth  of  the  future,  have 
long  since  faded  away  and  left  him  the  mere  hardened  cynic 
who  sneers  at  the  present  social  state  as  a  sort  of  tragic  farce, 
or  the  fatalist  who  dooms  it  to  certain  vast  cycles  of  natural 
growth  and  decay,  and  pensively  sighs  over  the  grandeur  and 
3D 


426  Modern  Religions  Scepticism.  [part  i.. 

decadence  of  nations,  states  and  empires  as  but  the  melan- 
choly lesson  of  all  history. 
C:^  At  last  he  loses  all  hope  of  any  complete  triumph  of  the 
Christian  religion  itself.  It  has  but  followed  Judaism  as  one 
divine  economy  succeeds  another,  with  no  elements  of  self- 
perpetuation;  and  even  Protestantism,  though  vigorously 
resisting  the  corruptions  of  Catholicism  for  a  time,  begins  to 
show  signs  of  disintegration  and  decay.  The  high  thinking 
and  plain  living  of  a  former  age  have  been  reversed,  and  that 
superangelic  pietism  which  fancied  itself  ready  to  suffer 
eternal  perdition  for  the  divine  glory,  after  paling  into  an 
intellectual  transcendentalism  or  metaphysical  orthodoxy,  has 
at  length  vanished  in  mere  Horatian  culture  and  Epicurean 
luxury.  And  if  he  may  have  indulged  in  any  specula- 
tions as  to  some  future  absolute  religion  in  which  all  others 
are  to  be  merged,  he  has  soon  found  them  superficial  and 
visionary,  and  become  the  religious  pessimist  who  regards 
defect  and  evil  as  inherent  in  the  whole  finite  creation,  or  the 
ascetic  who  rejects  humanity  as  hopelessly  corrupt  and 
irredeemable,  and  turns  away  from  the  whole  existing  civili- 
zation with  all  its  accumulated  arts,  sciences  and  politics  as 
so  much  splendid  rubbish  of  sin  soon  to  be  wrecked  in  the 
flames  of  a  vast  judicial  conflagration. 

Thus  the  despondent  sceptics  on  both  sides  are  falling  into 
apathy,  and  would  alike  paralyze  all  effort.  If  they  can  be 
said  to  admit  a  question  between  science  and  religion,  it  is 
only  to  adjourn  it  at  once  to  another  life,  or  reduce  it  to  a 
nullity;  while  the  whole  existing  civilization  and  Christianity 
they  would  treat  as  simply  experimental  and  abortive. 

Against  this  last  and  most  specious  of  the  errors  under  re- 
view, it  only  remains  to  urge  that  the  prospective  must  grow 
out  of  the  existing  relations  of  reason  and  revelation.  Though 
neither  seems  now  in  full  harmony  with  the  other,  yet  both 
are  in  an  actual  process  of  reconciliation.  Far  distant  as  may 
appear  their  coincidence,  yet  we  are  at  least  at  its  beginnings, 
and  may  already  strive  for  its  accomplishment.  The  despair 
that,  on  account  of  some  first  failures,  would  abandon  it,  or 
postpone  it  to  an  ideal  heaven  or  remote  future  dispensation, 
is  to  be  resisted  for  several  reasons : 


CHAP,  v.]  Concluding  Argiimait.  427 

In  the  first  place,  the  spirit  of  such  scepticism  is  weak  and 
ignoble.  What  if  it  be  true,  that  all  present  knowledge 
must  soon  be  lost  in  beatific  vision,  or  be  eclipsed  by  millen- 
nial glory,  or  is  at  best  but  confused  and  meagre  ;  shall  we 
therefore  despise  it,  and  make  no  effort  to  purge  and  increase 
it?  Had  the  generations  before  us  so  thought  and  acted, 
where  now  would  have  been  the  Christianity  and  civilization 
that  adorn  our  era  ?  So  long  as  we  are  on  the  earth,  and 
members  of  the  race  it  nourishes,  it  will  be  a  high  duty,  as 
well  as  instinct,  to  swell  the  tide  of  truth  in  all  lands  through  all 
time.  Better  far  to  toil  after  even  an  impossible  ideal  of  know- 
ledge, than  to  sink  in  supine  ignorance;  better  to  yearn  after 
the  boundless  unknown  as  ever  knowable,  than  basely  to 
despair  of  it  as  unknowable.  The  worthy  aim  and  rational 
goal  of  science  is  not  nescience  but  omniscience. 

In  the  second  place,  the  premises  of  such  scepticism  are 
narrow  and  unfounded.  Because  religion  and  science  are  as 
yet  imperfect  and  discordant,  it  does  not  follow  that  reason 
and  revelation  themselves  are  defective  and  in  need  of  some 
miraculous  readjustment.  We  cannot,  in  fact,  conceive  of  any 
better  or  any  other  modes  of  cognition  than  those  with  which 
we  are  now  familiar.  A  future  state,  wherein  the  soul  is  to 
seize  the  whole  infinitude  of  truth  by  one  swift  intuition,  or  in 
one  blazing  apocalypse,  is  but  the  dream  of  a  mystical  fancy. 
As  the  Infinite  Mind  has  been  gradual  in  unfolding  the  uni- 
verse, so  must  the  finite  mind  be  gradual  in  reviewing  it;  and 
if  the  Creator  passes  through  chaos  to  cosmos  in  the  procers 
of  creation,  shall  not  the  creature,  retracing  that  process,  be 
ofttimes  worn  and  bewildered  ere  he  reach  the  vision  and 
sabbath  of  perfect  knowledge  ?  It  would  seem  to  result  from 
their  logical  relations  to  one  another,  that  it  is  the  function  of 
the  finite  reason  to  recapitulate  the  Infinite  Reason;  that  in 
this  endless  effort  after  the  divine  rationale  of  the  universe, 
the  sciences  must  ever  proceed  as  now  by  joint  revelation 
and  experience,  and  in  the  order  of  the  creative  logic,  from 
the  simpler  to  the  more  complex  phenomena,  each  resuming 
that  which  is  behind  it  and  requiring  that  which  is  before  it; 
that  since  this  problem  of  creation,  upon  which  they  are  en- 
gaged, has  immensity  for  its  scene  and  eternity  for  its  scope. 


428  Modern  Religious  Sceptieism.  [part  i. 

both  celestial  and  terrestrial  races  are  embarked  in  the 
mighty  argument  on  the  basis  of  their  present  material 
and  spiritual  relations;  and  that  there  can  be  no  pause  nor 
retreat  in  their  progress,  but  only  an  eternal  approximation  of 
that  fulness  of  knowledge  which  shall  be  gained,  when  all  the 
worlds  of  space  shall  have  given  up  their  secrets  and  all  the 
ages  of  time  shall  have  unfolded  their  marvels,  and  God  shall 
be  all  in  all. 

In  the  third  place,  such  scepticism  ignores  past  progress. 
Appalled  at  the  vastness  of  the  unknown,  it  overlooks  the 
known  and  is  blind  to  the  immense  advance  of  the  present  over 
former  generations.  The  actual  history  of  the  sciences  shows 
that  it  is  only  during  their  imperfect  stages  of  development  that 
they  come  into  seeming  conflict  with  revelation ;  that  in  their 
issue,  through  their  own  discoveries,  they  but  authenticate 
the  facts  and  prove  the  truths  of  Scripture;  and  that  by  the 
very  law  of  their  successive  evolution  they  involve  a  logical 
unfolding  of  the  Infinite  by  the  finite  reason  and  a  cumulative 
vindication  of  the  divine  attributes  in  the  order  of  their  mani- 
festation and  dignity,  from  that  science  which  discovers  to  us 
a  Celestial  Mechanician,  infinite  in  power,  up  to  that  which  may 
yet  disclose  to  us  a  Celestial  Father,  infinite  in  love.  Astro- 
nomy has  already  emerged  from  the  mists  of  infidel  criticism 
with  an  overwhelming  exhibition  of  the  God  of  Scripture  as 
also  the  God  of  Nature,  and  the  reasonable  presumption  is  that 
the  whole  train  of  the  sciences  in  their  normal  order  will 
follow,  until  the  entire  Deity  as  revealed  shall  be  also  demon- 
strated; the  illustration  of  His  natural  attributes  afforded  by 
physics  at  length  finding  its  crown  and  complement  in  a  still 
more  glorious  illustration  of  His  moral  attributes  through  the 
psychical  sciences.  Even  geology  may  yet  only  elucidate 
Genesis,  and  sociology  forecast  the  apocalypse;  the  one  by  a 
scientific  revision  of  the  course  of  nature  and  the  other  by  a 
scientific  prevision  of  the  course  of  humanity.  And  when  at 
length  the  terrestrial  physics  and  ethics  are  thus  complete, 
there  will  be  the  means  of  projecting  that  system  of  celestial 
physics  and  ethics,  through  which  to  mount  with  growing 
knowledge  and  faith,  in  endless  progression,  toward  the  per- 
fection of  omniscience   itself.     To   suppose  that  this   grand 


CHAP,  v.]  Concluding  Argument.  429 

series  could  be  rudely  broken  by  a  miraculous  millennium 
and  so  much  of  it  as  already  lies  in  the  past  left  without  its 
logical  sequel  and  complement  in  the  future,  would  be  to 
suppose  an  anomaly  for  which  all  nature  could  afford  no  ana- 
logy, precedent  or  palliation. 

In  the  fourth  place,  such  scepticism  mistakes  the  pre- 
sent social  exigency.  Through  all  ages  the  populace  has 
craved  prodigies  and  catastrophes,  rather  than  the  ordinary 
means  of  Providence,  for  the  world's  regeneration,  and  can 
still  think  of  no  better  corrective  of  its  existing  moral  and 
intellectual  evils  than  some  new  divine  economy  to  be  forced 
upon  it  by  means  of  destructive  judgments,  involving  vast 
planetary  convulsions  or  political  revolutions.  In  this  respect 
the  religious  despondent  differs  from  the  religious  eclectic 
only  in  seeking  a  miraculous  rather  than  an  artificial  recon- 
struction of  society.  It  may  be  vain  to  argue  against  such  a 
defect  of  thought,  blended  as  it  often  is  with  the  purest  faith 
and  zeal;  and  yet  there  will,  notwithstanding,  always  be 
those,  having  like  faith  and  zeal,  whom  it  fails  to  satisfy,  and 
who  are  content  to  look  for  a  millennium  which  shall  be  an 
intelligible  triumph  of  the  Divine  Reason  through  the  human 
reason  over  all  error  and  sin;  a  growing  demonstration  of 
revealed  truth,  before  which  all  false  opinions  and  institutions 
shall  slowly  fade  away  like  mists  and  clouds  of  sunrise,  until  the 
whole  race  is  transfigured  and  the  earth  full  of  the  glory  of  God. 

This  hopeful  view  is  more  in  keeping  with  the  analogies  of 
prophecy.  No  principle  is  plainer  than  that  the  transition  of 
prophecy  into  history  appears  violent  and  dramatic  only  in 
prospect.  As  the  Christian  economy  quietly  resumed  and 
carried  forward  the  Hebrew  economy,  so  the  millennial 
economy  may  prove  to  be  but  the  existing  human  world  as 
matured  and  perfected.  And  even  if  a  destruction  of  the  pre- 
sent physical  system  be  within  the  scope  of  Scripture  and  of 
nature,  it  would  seem  that  it  could  only  be  with  a  view  to 
some  more  glorious  moral  reconstruction,  whereby  the  whole 
past  shall  be  taken  up  again  into  the  future,  even  as  Provi- 
dence has  already  erected  the  modern  out  of  the  antediluvian 
world,  and  yet  left  both  the  individual  and  the  social  consti- 
tution of  the  race  unimpaired. 


430  Modern  Religious  Scepticism.  [part  i. 

The  same  view  is  more  in  keeping  with  the  analogies  of 
history.  All  philosophic  historians  are  beginning  to  conceive 
of  the  career  of  humanity  as  spiral  rather  than  circular,  marked 
by  average  progression  rather  than  mere  fruitless  recurrences 
and  aimless  repetitions.  Great  men  may  live  and  die,  em- 
pires may  rise  and  fall,  whole  civilizations  may  flourish  and 
decay;  but  the  race  itself,  inheriting  and  transmitting  from 
one  generation  to  another,  always  survives  and.  Phoenix-like, 
springs  for  bolder  flights  and  grander  prospects.  Hebrew, 
Greek,  and  Roman  ideas  are  still  powerful  in  modern  society, 
though  the  nations  which  wrought  them  out  have  ages  since 
perished.  Can  we  believe  in  the  face  of  six  thousand  years 
of  such  progress  that  the  social  system  is  to  be  arrested  and 
destroyed  ?  After  all  the  advance  that  has  been  made  in  the 
long  lapse  of  time,  will  any  millennium  appear  too  distant  or 
Utopian  to  have  its  growth  out  of  even  this  present  disordered 
world  ? 

The  same  view  is  demanded  by  the  organism  of  society. 
According  to  that  organism,  the  progress  of  the  arts  depends 
upon  the  progress  of  the  sciences,  and  the  former  come  to 
fruition  in  the  order  of  the  latter.  Already  the  material  arts 
are  shedding  a  millennial  splendor  in  the  marvels  of  printing, 
steam  and  telegraphy,  while  the  remaining  series  begin  to 
presage  the  decline  of  caste,  war  and  superstition,  through  the 
agency  of  commerce,  diplomacy  and  philanthropy.  And  it 
enters  into  the  very  notion  of  social  regeneration,  that  this 
organism  of  society  should  continue  to  be  developed  until  its 
ideal  is  fully  realized  in  a  perfected  Christian  art,  science  and 
polity,  and  the  whole  race  intellectually,  morally  and  physi- 
cally transformed.  Upon  any  other  terms,  a  millennium, 
properly  speaking,  is  simply  inconceivable,  if  not  impossible. 

And  the  same  view  harmonizes  the  otherwise  conflicting 
interests  which  science  and  religion  have  fostered.  Instead 
of  abandoning  both  or  postponing  both  to  some  vague  here- 
after, it  begins  at  once  to  practically  unite  the  natural  and  the 
supernatural,  the  terrestrial  and  the  celestial,  the  human  and 
the  divine.  Heaven  is  found  to  be  but  the  full  flower  of  earth. 
The  kingdom  of  the  heavens  (as  the  Greek  may  be  rendered) 
is  that  realm  of  planets,  suns  and  stars,  to  which  the  earth  is 


CHAP,  v.]  Concluding  Argument.  43 1 

both  spiritually  and  materially  linked,  of  which  now  we  have 
some  scientific  hints  from  celestial  mechanics  and  chemistry, 
but  which  shall  yet  be  more  fully  unfolded  by  celestial  soci- 
ology and  theology  as  the  abode  of  our  Father  who  is  in  the 
heavens,  and  of  whose  Son  the  whole  family  in  heaven  and 
earth  is  named.  The  world  to  come  is  to  be  thought  of  as 
being  historically  developed  out  of  the  world  that  now  is,  and 
the  life  of  the  individual  so  bound  up  in  the  life  of  the  race, 
that  both  have  their  resurrection  together,  whensoever  the 
spiritual  shall  so  predominate  over  the  material  forces  of 
the  planet  as  to  transfigure  it  into  an  abode  of  truth  and 
righteousness.  Even  the  coming  of  the  Son  of  Man  to  judge 
both  quick  and  dead,  and  the  tnumphal  meeting  of  saints  and 
angels  in  the  skies  may  be  viewed  as  not  less  a  crisis  than  a 
pageant;  the  rational  blending  of  the  earthly  into  the  heavenly 
history;  the  glorious  appearing  of  a  new,  redeemed  orb 
amid  the  sisterhood  of  worlds;  the  winged  globe  bursting 
from  its  chrysalis  and  blazoning  its  cross  among  the  stars. 

We  may  therefore  conclude,  after  a  full  survey,  of  all 
modern  philosophical  opinions,  that  the  two  great  interests  of 
religion  and  science  are  not  only  reconcileable,  but  actually 
being  reconciled.  Let  neither  the  scientist  nor  the  religionist 
despair  of  their  ultimate  harmony,  but  rather  let  both  strive 
together  to  effect  it,  and  therein  hail  at  once  the  thorough 
fusion  of  Christianity  and  civilization  and  the  practical  union 
of  earth  and  heaven. 


PART    SECOND. 


THE    PHILOSOPHICAL    THEORY 


HARMONY 


SCIENCE   AND    RELIGION 


CHAPTER   I. 


THE   UMPIRAGE  OF  PHILOSOPHY  BETWEEN 
SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 


It  is  a  preliminary  task  which  Philosophy  exacts  from  her 
votaries,  before  entering  upon  any  grave  inquiry,  to  cleanse 
the  mind  by  means  of  pure  thoughts  and  strict  definitions. 
If  the  mere  novice  is  apt  to  disdain  such  discipline  as  irksome 
or  needless,  he  soon  finds  that  without  it  he  cannot  hope  to 
penetrate  to  her  inmost  mysteries,  or  will  invade  the  oracle 
only  to  be  perplexed  and  abashed  by  its  responses. 

There  is  especial  need  of  all  the  philosophic  virtues  in 
approaching  the  great  question  which  is  now  before  us.  We 
have  seen  that  for  more  than  three  centuries  the  civilized 
world  has  been  agitated  by  an  unnatural  strife  between  the 
scientific  and  the  religious  classes.  Many  battles  have  been 
fought ;  much  learning  and  research  on  both  sides  expended ; 
and  already  some  substantial  advantages  gained.  Religion 
has  grown  more  tolerant  of  scientific  opinion;  science  has 
shed  new  light  upon  religious  truth ;  and  the  salutary  lessons 
of  their  former  controversies  are  not  yet  spent  in  other  fields 
of  inquiry.  But  after  all,  what  progress  has  been  made  toward 
a  settlement  of  the  general  question  involved  in  such  conflicts  ? 
How  much  nearer  are  we  to  a  final  philosophy  or  accepted 
theory  of  the  reciprocal  relations  of  reason  and  revelation, 
of  science  and  religion?  What  broad  surveys  have  we  of 
their  distinct  provinces  and  common  ground?  What  clear 
discriminations  of  their  respective  methods  and  laws,  and  of 
their  logical  and  historical  interaction?     And  what  systematic 

435 


43^  The  Umpirage  of  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

attempts  at  harmonizing  and  organizing  the  existing  bodies 
of  knowledge  which  they  have  developed?  Must  not  every 
enlightened  observer  admit  that  the  field  of  controversy  has 
been  widening  rather  than  contracting ;  that  the  state  of.  par- 
ties throughout  that  field  grows  more  involved  and  serious; 
and  that  the  tenor  of  the  strife  is  -already  critical  ?  And  is  it 
to  be  maintained  that  this  is  the  normal  or  final  relationship 
of  the  two  interests?  Are  they  of  necessity  and  always  mu- 
tually indifferent,  antagonistic,  exterminating?  Or,  do  they 
admit  of  gradual  reunion,  coincidence  and  harmony?  These 
are  questions  which  begin  to  force  themselves  upon  thoughtful 
minds.  They  not  only  invite,  but  require  and  deserve  con- 
sideration. Their  very  difificulty  and  delicacy  are  overborne 
by  their  urgency. 

And  what  makes  the  great  reconciliation  still  more  impera- 
tive is  the  growing  conviction  which  has  been  all  along  latent 
in  many  minds  on  both  sides  of  the  question,  that  the  whole 
conflict  is  needless,  if  not  unreal,  and  largely  due  to  the  false 
issues  and  misleading  phrases  of  mere  professional  tactics. 
It  was  one  of  the  trenchant  sayings  of  Dr.  Johnson  that  the 
apologetical  divines  of  his  time  had  so  managed  the  evidences 
of  Christianity  as  to  put  the  apostles  on  trial  for  forgery  every 
night.  Professor  Maurice  agrees  with  "A  Layman"  to 
whom  he  writes,  in  censuring  those  weaker  brethren  who 
struggle  to  protect  the  Bible  from  the  last  new  theory  pro- 
pounded at  the  British  Association,  and  are  thrown  into 
ignominious  rapture  or  terror  by  the  favorable  or  unfavorable 
comments  of  any  distinguished  member  of  that  body.  At  the 
same  time,  veteran  scientists,  like  Agassiz,  Gray,  Henry  and 
Lionel  Beale,  have  deplored  the  needless  effort  of  some  of  the 
younger  naturalists  to  dispense  with  all  theistic  conceptions 
in  their  researches,  and  the  still  more  unwarrantable  attempt 
of  others  to  impose  upon  the  laity  certain  atheistic  and  mate- 
rialistic speculations  which  have  never  been  received  within 
the  profession  as  scientific  verities.  Bishop  Berkeley,  in  his 
sketch  of  the  Minute  Philosopher,  would  seem  to  have  antici- 
pated a  race  of  brilliant  and  accomplished  savants  of  our  day, 
who  would  eschew  the  pedantry  of  a  college  education  and 
make  an  irreligious  form  of  science  fashionable  and  popular 


CHAP.  I.]  The  Umpirage  of  Philosophy.  437 

by  means  of  instructive  lectures,  seasoned  with  wit  and 
raillery  and  uttered  with  spirit;  a  sort  of  sect  which  diminish 
all  the  most  valuable  things,  the  thoughts,  views,  and  hopes 
of  men;  all  the  knowledge,  notions,  and  theories  of  the  mind 
they  reduce  to  sense ;  human  nature  they  contract  and  degrade 
to  the  narrow,  low  standard  of  animal  life,  and  assign  us  only 
a  small  pittance  of  time  instead  of  immortality;  and  when 
they  are  charged  with  these  opinions,  they  very  gravely  re- 
mark that  they  have  done  no  injury  to  man,  since  if  he  be  a 
little,  short-lived,  contemptible  animal,  it  was  not  their  saying 
it  made  him  so.  "Be  it  ours,"  — says  the  eloquent  Dean 
of  Westminster,  in  a  recent  address  at  St.  Andrews,  on  the 
reconciliation  of  theology  and  science,  "to  fasten  our  thoughts 
not  on  the  passions  and  parties  of  the  brief  to-day,  but  on  the 
hopes  of  the  long  to-morrow.  The  day,  the  year,  may  per- 
chance belong  to  the  destructives,  the  cynics,  and  the  parti- 
zans;  but  the  morrow,  the  coming  century,  belongs  to  the 
catholic,  comprehensive,  discriminating,  all-embracing  Chris- 
tianity which  has  the  promise,  not  of  this  present  time,  but  of 
the  times  which  are  to  be." 

We  believe  that  the  mass  of  scientific  and  religious  men 
are  not  to  be  found  in  any  of  the  parties  which  have  been 
delineated;  neither  among  the  Extremists,  who  would  put 
religion  and  science  at  variance,  nor  among  the  Indifferentists, 
who  would  disjoin  and  seclude  them;  nor  yet  among  the 
Eclectics  who  would  blend  them  illogically,  nor  still  less 
among  the  Sceptics  who  despair  of  their  reconciliation.  Rather 
is  there  a  general  persuasion  of  their  essential  harmony  and 
a  feeling  that  the  time  has  already  come  to  insist  upon  that 
harmony  as  the  normal  state  of  their  relations;  to  raise  this' 
imaginary  siege  and  blockade  of  "evidences"  and  "apolo- 
getics" by  which  for  some  time  past  they  have  been  estranged 
and  divided;  to  dwell  upon  their  ancient  alliances  rather  than 
their  transient  conflicts,  and  proclaim  a  just  peace  amid  their 
seeming  warfare ;  in  a  word,  to  lift  the  standard  of  that  catho- 
lic, conclusive  philosophy  which  shall  intelligently  embrace 
them  both  in  a  rational  coalescence,  shall  ascertain  and 
formulate  the  terms  of  their  lasting  amity,  gather  their 
blended  trophies,  canonize  their  saints  and  heroes,  and  cele- 


438  The  Umpirage  of  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

brate  their  mutual  victories,  for  the  divine  gloiy  and  human 
welfare. 

And  we  shall  need  to  enter  upon  this  part  of  the  treatise 
with  a  brief  survey  of  the  present  state  of  the  sciences,  from  a 
philosophical  point  of  view.  Without  such  a  survey  we 
cannot  hope  to  understand  the  precise  work  to  be  done  in 
harmonizing  and  organizing  them.  Indeed,  as  Whewell  and 
Comte  have  shown,  it  is  only  by  a  careful  study  of  the 
sciences  themselves  that  we  can  reach  their  true  philosophy 
or  that  science  of  the  sciences  which  they  must  yield  as  their 
last  and  noblest  fruitage.  It  is  only  from  a  knowledge  of 
their  past  growth  and  present  condition  that  we  can  forecast 
their  future  progress.  Now,  it  has  been  seen  in  a  previous 
chapter,  that  each  of  them,  since  the  Reformation,  has  broken 
into  two  sections,  the  one  mainly  scientific  and  the  other 
largely  religious,  and  that  these  two  sections  in  parting  from 
each  other  have  proceeded  through  three  distinct  stages ;  the 
first,  a  stage  of  healthful  separation  and  progress,  marked  by 
ascertained  facts  and  truths ;  the  second,  a  stage  of  mutual 
avoidance,  filled  with  conflicting  hypotheses  and  dogmas; 
and  the  third,  a  stage  of  open  rupture  issuing  in  antagonistic 
speculations  and  beliefs.  It  is  to  the  second  of  these  stages 
that  we  are  to  confine  our  attention  in  this  chapter.  Leaving 
out  of  view  those  portions  of  knowledge  which  have  attained 
to  scientific  certainty  and  are  no  longer  in  debate,  those  dis- 
covered facts  and  laws  which  alone  make  positive  science, 
we  shall  find  remaining  to  be  considered  a  mass  of  unsolved 
problems,  mostly  questions  of  origin  and  destiny,  which  are 
growing  more  complex  every  hour,  and  before  which  the  reli- 
gious and  scientific  champions  of  our  day  are  crossing  lances, 
like  the  two  knights  before  the  mystic  shield,  with  their 
respective  hypotheses  and  dogmas  in  a  more  or  less  contra- 
dictory state.  It  will  be  our  first  task  to  survey  the  opposite 
sides  or  phases  of  these  questions,  as  expressed  in  such 
dogmas  and  hypotheses,  from  an  independent  position,  in  a 
strictly  philosophical  mood,  without  prejudging  them  in  the 
slightest  degree,  and  with  an  effort  to  do  each  of  them  the 
utmost  justice.  We  shall  then  have  the  whole  case  before  us, 
with  the  materials  for  a  full  and  fair  decision. 


CHAP.  I.]  Present  State  of  the  Sciences.  439 

Let  it  therefore  be  carefully  noted,  once  for  all,  that  the 
hypotheses  and  dogmas  which  are  held  respecting  scientific 
questions  are  now  coming  before  us  in  their  pure  and  simple 
form,  without  any  admixture  with  each  other,  and  as  enun- 
ciated by  the  highest  authorities.  Among  both  scientists  and 
religionists,  as  we  have  seen  in  previous  chapters,  may  be 
found  many  who  seek  to  blend  the  theories  of  science  with 
the  doctrines  of  religion,  as  well  as  some  who  would  put 
them  apart  or  at  variance.  But  such  classes  do  not  now  come 
within  our  survey,  as  our  present  object  is  simply  to  recall 
and  briefly  recapitulate  those  problematical  portions  of  each 
science,  which  are  of  a  hypothetical  and  a  dogmatic  nature, 
and  which  together  form  the  debatable  ground  between  the 
two  parties  to  be  reconciled. 

Problems  in  the  Physical  Sciences. 

Astronomy — to  begin  with  the  oldest  of  the  concrete 
sciences — still  offers  to  the  two  parties  that  ever  present 
problem  which  has  tasked  our  race  for  thousands  of  years, 
the  origin  of  the  heavens,  the  production  of  those  mysterious 
bodies,  the  sun,  planets,  and  satellites,  the  stars,  galaxies,  and 
nebulae  which  fill  the  immensity  of  space  around  us.  On  the 
scientific  side  of  this  question,  we  have  the  hypothesis  of 
universal  evolution,  of  a  spontaneous  growth  of  worlds  out  of 
crude  matter,  by  means  of  its  own  laws,  from  an  indefinite 
immensity  and  antiquity ;  in  a  word,  the  rise  of  the  present 
cosmos  from  a  primitive  chaos.  It  is  an  hypothesis  as  old  as 
the  fortuitous  atoms  of  Democritus  and  Epicurus  ;  and  though 
it  slumbered  during  "the  early  and  middle  ages  until  it  was 
revived  by  Bruno  and  Gassendi  in  the  seventeenth  century,  it 
has  since  come  forth  again  with  renewed  vigor  and  in  more 
scientific  forms.  Descartes  led  the  way  with  his  original 
plenum  of  vortices,  forming  and  whirling  the  sun  and  planets, 
in  vast  concentric  eddies  of  different  kinds  of  matter,  Kant 
followed  with  his  primitive  chaos  of  attractive  and  repulsive 
particles,  massing  into  revolving  globes  and  poising  them- 
selves in  the  equilibrium  of  the  planetary  forces,  according  to 
the  Newtonian  principles  of  mechanics.  La  Place  at  length 
completed  such  views  with  his  magnificent  postulate   of  a 


440  The  Uinpirage  of  Philosophy.  [part  ii, 

universal  nebula  or  fire-mist,  eddying  into  a  central  igneous 
body  like  the  sun,  and  then  breaking  into  rotating  rings,  cool- 
ing into  cloudy  and  watery  spheres,  hardening  into  solid 
shells,  like  'the  different  planets  of  the  solar  system.  The 
elder  Herschel  pushed  this  sublime  speculation  with  the 
telescope  into  the  sidereal  heavens  among  the  nebulous 
masses  which  were  there  supposed  to  be  forming  themselves 
into  other  suns,  planets,  and  systems.  And  by  many  living 
authorities  it  is  now  claimed  that  the  nebular  theory,  as  con- 
firmed by  the  spectroscope,  enables  us  to  trace  the  different 
phases  of  cosmic  growth  in  the  heavens  as  plainly  as  any 
organic  process  upon  earth. 

On  the  religious  side  of  the  same  question  we  have  the 
dogma  of  immediate  creation,  of  an  instantaneous  starting 
forth  of  the  heavens  and  earth  from  nothing,  in  their  present 
form,  at  the  mere  word  of  Jehovah.  It  is  a  dogma  dating 
from  the  Hebrew  and  Christian  Scriptures,  and  in  various 
terms  has  been  formulated  and  handed  down  to  us  by  the 
rabbis,  the  fathers,  the  schoolmen,  the  reformers,  and  the 
divines  of  the  following  age.  Philo,  the  Platonic  Jew,  in 
agreement  with  the  Maccabees,  held  that  the  worlds  were  not 
formed  from  anything  pre-existent,  but  spoken  into  being  by 
the  Divine  Word.  St.  Augustine  taught  that  the  Deity 
fashioned  the  heavens  and  earth  not  out  of  matter,  nor  yet 
out  of  Himself,  but  of  nothing,  by  an  instantaneous  exertion 
of  His  own  free  will.  St.  Aquinas  followed  with  the  scholastic 
distinction,  that  God  from  eternity  willed  that  the  world 
should  be,  and  not  that  the  world  should  be  from  eternity. 
Calvin  stigmatized  as  a  profane  jeer  the  inquiry  why  the 
heavens  and  earth  should  have  been  created  only  six  thousand 
years  ago,  after  so  many  idle  ages  had  rolled  away  and  with 
so  much  vacant  space  left  running  to  waste.  The  great  body 
of  living  divines  following  these  different  authorities  in  the 
Jewish,  Greek,  Roman  Catholic,  and  Protestant  Churches,  still 
teach  and  confess  the  same  dogma,  and  at  this  hour  it  stands 
defined  in  the  same  terms  as  when  the  heavens  were  but 
admired  as  a  blue  canopy  or  illuminated  dome. 

Besides  the  origin  of  the  heavens,  the  question  'of  their 
destiny,  so  long  a  mere  theme  of  devout  fancy,  is  becoming 


CHAP.  I.]  Present  State  of  the  Sciences.  441 

also  a  problem  of  exact  science.  It  was  taught  by  all  the 
great  doctors,  poets  and  artists,  from  the  days  of  Clement, 
Bernard,  and  Angelo,  that  the  whole  existing  firmament 
might  at  any  moment  be  destroyed  and  renewed  by  the  flames 
of  a  general  conflagration  in  order  to  become  the  pure  abode 
of  saints  and  angels ;  and  even  since  the  rise  of  astronomical 
conceptions,  the  comet,  the  meteor,  and  the  aurora  have  ever 
and  anon  been  hailed  as  portents  of  judgment  and  signs  of 
the  approaching  kingdom  of  heaven.  But  we  are  now  assured, 
on  the  authority  of  leading  physicists,  such  as  Grove,  Helm- 
holtz,  and  Tyndall,  that  so  far  as  science  can  yet  foresee,  the 
advancing  evolution  can  only  issue  in  gradual  dissolution; 
that  the  potential  forces  of  heat,  light,  and  life,  which  have 
been  stored  from  the  primitive  nebula,  or  from  surrounding 
meteors  in  star,  sun,  and  planet,  as  the  ages  roll  on,  will  inevi- 
tably be  spent,  and  the  whole  machinery  of  the  heavens  fall 
back  into  ruins ;  that  already  the  moon  is  but  a  charred  cinder 
of  the  earth,  the  earth  a  cooling  ember  of  the  sun,  the  sun  a 
blazing  fragment  of  the  stars,  the  stars  themselves  but  dying 
suns,  and  all  their  galaxies  doomed  to  pale  and  wane  into 
universal  night  and  death. 

The  design  of  the  heavens,  the  habitability  of  other  worlds 
and  their  mutual  relations,  the  possibility  of  life  and  intelli- 
gence throughout  the  universe,  are  also  emerging  questions 
of  like  double  import.  While  the  one  party,  from  Dionysius 
and  Gregory  to  Chalmers,  have  imagined  an  ascending  hier- 
archy of  angels,  principalities  and  powers,  rank  above  rank, 
through  the  heaven  of  heavens  toward  the  throne  of  Jehovah; 
the  other  party,  from  Plutarch  and  Kepler  to  Whewell,  can 
discern  in  the  stars,  sun,  and  planets  only  so  many  globes  of 
fire,  vapor  and  slag,  wholly  incapable  of  sustaining  life  and 
reason,  and  as  destitute  of  any  intelligible  purpose  as  the 
crystals  that  sparkle  or  the  flowers  that  bloom  where  no  eye 
can  ever  see  them.  And  the  concluding  question  as  to  the 
goal  or  aim  of  the  whole  cosmic  process  has  at  length  issued 
in  the  extreme  opinions  of  Jonathan  Edwards  and  Herbert 
Spencer ;  on  the  one  hand,  that  of  a  miraculous  creation  and 
regeneration  of  the  heavens  and  earth  at  fixed  epochs  for  the 
good  of  creatures  and  the  glory  of  their  Creator;  on  the 
3-F 


442  Tlie  Umpirage  of  Philosophy.  [part  ii, 

other  hand,  that  of  a  rhythmic  ebb  and  flow  of  ever-persistent 
force  from  nebula  to  planet  and  planet  to  nebula,  from  chaos 
to  cosmos  and  cosmos  to  chaos,  through  endless  cycles  of 
evolving  and  dissolving  worlds,  appearing  and  disappearing 
like  the  drops  which  sparkle  in  a  sunset-cloud. 

Geology  next  meets  us  with  problems  scarcely  less  grand 
and  even  more  interesting,  such  as  the  origin  of  our  own 
planet,  the  formation  of  the  rocky  layers  which  inclose  its 
hidden  contents,  and  the  growth  of  the  fossil  plants  and 
animals  which  are  found  buried  in  its  crust.  On  the  one  side 
of  the  question  is  the  hypothesis  of  secular  evolution,  of  a 
slow  unfolding  of  the  globe  from  a  chaotic  mass  into  its  or- 
ganized form,  through  the  action  of  existing  causes,  during 
indefinite  time.  If  any  germs  of  such  an  hypothesis  can  be 
traced  inthe  mundane  egg  of  Orpheus  and  Aristophanes,  the 
primitive  fire  and  water  of  Heraclitus  and  Thales  and  the 
speculations  of  Strabo  upon  floods  and  volcanos,  they  re- 
mained buried  under  dogmatic  traditions  during  the  middle 
ages  until  they  were  again  brought  forth  by  the  early  Italian 
geologists,  and  at  length  cast  into  a  more  scientific  shape. 
Leibnitz  and  Buffbn  fancied  the  primitive  earth  a  sort  of  ex- 
tinguished fragment  of  the  sun  with  a  volcanic  nucleus  and 
universal  ocean,  through  whose  joint  action  its  seas  and  con- 
tinents were  formed.  Werner  and  Hutton,  as  founders  of  the 
rival  schools  of  Neptunists  and  Vulcanists,  traced  the  aqueous 
and  igneous  strata  to  the  same  causes  which  are  still  pro- 
ducing alluvium  and  lava,  though  at  a  rate  that  would  require 
an  immeasurable  past.  Lamarck  and  St.  Hilaire  broached 
theories  of  animal  transmutation,  serving  to  blend  through 
long  epochs  the  fossil  and  living  species  which  Cuvier  would 
have  broken  apart  with  his  successive  deluges.  Herschel  and 
Poisson,  in  like  manner,  sought  to  transform  ancient  into 
modern  climates  by  means  of  celestial  causes  of  inconceivable 
slowness,  such  as  a  swaying  of  the  earth's  orbit  and  poles  in 
the  solar  rays,  a  fluctuation  of  heat  and  light  in  the  sun  itself, 
and  even  radiation  among  the  stars.  Babbage  and  Lyell 
traced  the  secular  changes  of  climate  and  species  to  more 
terrestrial  causes,  such  as  the  decline  of  the  earth's  primitive 
heat  and  the  gradual  shifting  of  the  continents  by  the  action 


CHAP.  I.]  Present  State  of  the  Sciences.  443 

of  its  crust.  Humboldt,  bringing  these  facts  together  into  a 
comprehensive  review,  has  sketched  the  progressive  stages 
of  our  planet  as  at  first  a  nebulous  ring,  then  an  incandescent 
sphere,  and  at  length  a  granite  shell  sustaining  between  the 
central  fire  and  solar  heat  the  successive  kingdoms  of  organic 
life  which  have  flourished  and  decayed  upon  its  surface. 
Most  living  geologists  and  palaeontologists  seem  to  proceed 
upon  some  such  hypothesis;  and  by  the  advanced  school 
according  to  Professor  Huxley,  it  is  held  to  be  not  unlikely 
that  the  whole  development  of  the  globe  through  all  its  eras 
and  phases  may  yet  be  traced  as  plainly  as  the  growth  of  a 
fowl  within  the  egg. 

On  the  religious  side  of  the  same  question  is  the  dogma  of 
successive  creations,  of  Almighty  fiats  calling  into  being  one 
after  another  land  and  sea  and  sky,  reptiles  and  plants  and 
animals  in  six  days  of  twenty-four  hours,  a  few  thousand  years 
ago.  Although  derived  from  the  Mosaic  Genesis,  it  is  a 
dogma  which  has  varied  its  terms  with  each  age  of  the  Church. 
The  early  fathers,  Clement  and  Origen,  treated  the  six  .days  as 
sacred  allegories  rather  than  literal  epochs.  The  later  fathers 
Athanasius  and  Augustine  termed  them  the  mere  timeless 
acts  of  an  instantaneous  creation,  successive  only  in  our 
thought,  and  figuratively  represented  to  us  as  working  days 
measured  by  sunrise  and  sunset.  The  schoolmen,  Hugh  of 
St.  Victor  and  Peter  Lombard,  defined  them  as  miraculous 
works  which  might  indeed  have  been  performed  all  at  once, 
as  the  fathers  taught,  but  in  fact  were  produced  successively, 
in  six  literal  days,  as  religious  lessons  of  the  Creator  to  His 
creatures.  The  Westminster  divines  also  held  them  to  be 
periods  of  twenty-four  hours,  and  found  their  rationale  in  the 
seven-fold  division  of  time  in  six  days  of  work  with  one  of 
worship.  Archbishop  Usher,  by  act  of  Parliament,  fixed  the 
date  of  Creation  on  the  25th  of  October,  4004,  b.  c,  and  the 
learned  Dr.  Gill  particularized  the  name  as  well  as  date  of 
each  creative  day  from  Monday  morning  to  Saturday  night. 
Living  divines  who  still  follow  these  different  authorities  have 
as  yet  made  no  new  definitions  of  the  dogma,  and  for  any- 
thing that  appears  in  our  existing  creeds,  the  interminable 
strata,  floras  and  faunas  which  geologists  have  been  unfolding, 


444  '^^^^  Umpirage  of  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

are   still   to  be  viewed   as   only  so   many   didactic   miracles 
wrought  in  a  single  week. 

The  destiny  of  the  globe  is  also  becoming  a  scientific  as 
well  as  a  religious  question.  It  formed  part  of  the  ancient 
faith  as  matured  by  Augustine  and  Aquinas  and  depicted  in 
the  sacred  arts,  that  our  earth,  having  once  been  cleansed  by 
water  for  the  sin  of  man,  would  yet  be  purged  by  fire  for  his 
redemption,  at  a  given  signal  when  the  Purgatory  beneath  it 
should  send  forth  its  flames.  And  even  some  of  the  early 
geologists,  such  as  Hooke  and  Ray,  looked  upon  the  earth- 
quake and  the  volcano  as  agents,  no  less  than  presages,  of 
such  a  catastrophe.  But  we  are  now  told,  in  accordance  with 
the  views  of  Fourier,  Thompson,  and  Mayer,  that  the  earth 
is  already  oxidated  or  burnt  through  its  crust  halfway  to  the 
core ;  that  it  has  grown  so  cool  in  the  course  of  ages  that  it 
could  not  now  melt  a  layer  of  ice  ten  feet  thick  in  a  hundred 
years;  and  that  the  lunar  tides  which  act  as  brakes  upon  the 
rotatory  motion  imparted  by  its  primordial  heat  must  in  time 
cause  it  to  spin  more  slowly  and  feebly,  until  at  length  it  shall 
flutter  upon  its  axis  as  a  dead  world  like  the  moon,  ever  turn- 
ing the  same  pallid  face  to  the  sun. 

And  the  remaining  question  as  to  the  end  or  scope  of  the 
whole  terrestrial  development  at  length  lands  us  between  the 
contrasted  views  of  Burnet  and  Lyell;  on  the  one.  side  that 
of  a  miraculous  deluge  and  conflagration  of  the  earth  between 
the  epochs  of  creation  and  judgment,  for  the  sake  of  man 
alone;  and  on  the  other  side  that  of  vast  periodic  changes  of 
climate  and  species  as  the  globe  heaves  and  shifts  its  conti- 
nents and  seas  through  the  great  year  of  the  zodiac,  or  nods 
to  and  from  the  sun,  crowned  with  verdure  and  capped  with 
snow  every  other  twelve  thousand  years,  or  mayhap  journeys 
with  the  sun  itself  among  the  stars  through  a  sidereal  summer 
and  winter,  from  an  igneous  to  a  glacial  epoch,  between 
which  our  rolling  seasons  are  flitting  like  the  brief  hours  of  a 
summer  day. 

Anthropology,  at  this  point,  comes  forward  with  problems 
still  more  complex  and  momentous,  such  as  the  origin  of  our 
race,  the  first  appearance  of  man  upon  the  earth,  and  the  mode 
of  his  connection  with  the  organic  scale.    On  the  scientific  side 


CHAP.  I.]  Present  State  of  the  Sciences.  445 

of  the  question  rises  before  us  the  hypothesis  of  derivative 
evolution,  of  a  gradual  growth  of  animal  into  human  species, 
under  organic  and  climatic  laws,  long  ages  ere  history  was 
born.  It  is  an  opinion  which  first  figured  in  the  mythology 
of  the  Greeks  and  Romans,  the  speculations  of  Epicurus,  and 
the  satires  of  Horace,  which  reappeared  in  the  ironical 
pleasantries  of  Monboddo  and  De  Maillet,  and  has  at  length 
in  our  day  passed  into  a  grave  controversy  of  science. 
Lamarck  imagined  transmutations  of  species  to  have  occurred 
through  the  long  eras  and  stages  of  an  organic  progression, 
by  the  instinctive  efforts  of  animals  to  adjust  themselves  to 
new  conditions,  the  stranded  turtle  growing  into  the  tortoise, 
the  high-browsing  camel  into  the  giraffe,  and  even  the  upright 
orang  into  civilized  man.  The  elder  Darwin,  the  author  of 
the  "Vestiges,"  and  Richard  Owen,  without  committing  them- 
selves to  any  theory,  held  the  existence  of  some  purely 
natural  law  of  organic  development  to  be  probable.  Hooker 
and  Wallace  have  at  length  proposed,  as  such  a  law  for  the 
vegetal  and  animal  world,  the  survival  of  the  best  or  fittest 
breeds  in  the  struggle  for  subsistence  which  is  ever,  going  on 
among  the  teeming  populations  of  nature.  Mr.  Charles  Dar- 
win, conjecturing  that  man  himself  may  thus  have  fought  his 
way  upward  from  the  inferior  races,  has  been  collecting  the 
inherited  proofs  of  such  origin  from  his  embryonic  stages,  his 
rudimental  organs,  and  his  very  physiognomy.  Professor 
Huxley  has  suggested  that  even  his  highest  faculties  of  feel- 
ing and  intellect  may  be  seen  germinating  in  some  of  the 
lower  species  with  which  he  is  most  nearly  connected.  Pro- 
fessor Haeckel  declares  that,  in  the  course  of  his  organic  life, 
from  the  germ  to  the  grave,  he  epitomizes  all  the  successive 
types  of  the  palaeontological  scale.  And  Sir  Charles  Lyell 
already  looks  for  his  pedigree  in  the  entombed  dynasties  of 
nature,  among  such  typical  shapes  as  the  proudest  nobles  still 
blazon  for  their  crests.  It  is  frequently  said  that  the  majority 
of  living  naturalists  accept  the  hypothesis  in  its  different 
forms,  or  at  least  the  principle  upon  which  it  proceeds,  and 
they  would  doubtless  agree  with  a  saying  attributed  to 
Schaaffhausen,  that  the  secular  transformation  of  animal  into 
human  species,  if  once  proved,  could  be  no  more  marvelous 


44^  The  Umpirage  of  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

to  science  than  the  simplest  metamorphosis  of  an  egg  into  a 
bird  or  of  a  child  into  a  man. 

On  the  other  side  of  the  same  question  stands  the  dogma 
of  independent  creation,  of  an  immediate  formation  of  man, 
out  of  the  ground,  in  the  image  of  God,  on  the  sixth  day  of 
the  first  week  of  the  world.  It  has  come  down  to  us  through 
various  forms  of  statement,  from  the  earliest  comments  on  the 
writings  of  Moses.  The  rabbins,  from  the  son  of  Sirach  to 
Philo,  delighted  to  depict  the  divine  image  in  Adam  as 
reflecting  every  conceivable  perfection  of  body  and  mind. 
The  fathers  Tertullian,  Chrysostom,  and  Augustine  discerned 
it  in  his  godlike  aspect  and  dominion,  in  his  intellectual  and 
moral  faculties,  and  in  a  miniature  trinity  of  his  body,  soul, 
and  spirit.  The  schoolmen  St.  Bernard,  Lombard,  and  Scotus 
distinguished  v  it  into  that  intellectual  image  which  even  in 
Gehenna  cannot  be  consumed,  and  that  moral  likeness  which 
he  lost  by  the  fall.  The  later  doctors  Bellarmin  and  Suarez 
described  such  moral  likeness  as  a  paradisaic  dowry  which  he 
had  forfeited,  a  virginal  wreath  of  which  he  had  been  de- 
spoiled. The  reformers  Luther  and  Calvin,  the  Puritans 
Owen  and  Edwards,  re-defined  it  as  a  physical,  intellectual, 
and  moral  likeness  which  has  been  wholly  lost  or  marred,  and 
can  only  be  supernaturally  restored.  No  existing  body  of 
divines  has  since  thought  of  retouching  these  ancient  symbols; 
and  at  the  present  moment,  while  anthropologists  on  all  sides 
are  mining  into  the  fossil  flora  and  fauna  coeval  with  primitive 
man,  our  reigning  dogmatic  conceptions  are  still  as  crude  and 
vague  as  the  fancies  of  sacred  artists  and  poets. 

The  development  of  mankind,  the  rise  of  races,  languages, 
and  arts,  is  a  further  question  which  science  begins  to  share 
with  religion.  It  has  been  the  traditional  faith,  from  the  time 
of  Augustine,  that  the  human  species,  being  potentially  folded 
in  Adam,  fell  with  him  from  Paradise,  became  whelmed  in  a 
universal  flood,  were  renewed  from  the  loins  of  Noah,  and 
afterward  dispersed  over  the  earth  by  a  miraculous  confusion 
of  language  into  nations  and  tribes,  with  an  ever-lapsing  or 
perverted  civilization.  And  until  very  lately,  scientific  anthro- 
pologists were  retracing  all  existing  races  to  Shem,  Ham,  and 
Japhet;  all  living  dialects  to  the  primitive  Hebrew,  and  all 


CHAP.  I.]  Present  State  of  the  Sciences.  447 

remaining  monuments  and  traditions  to  the  Tower  of  Babel. 
But  we  are  now  threatened  with  a  total  revolution  of  these 
opinions.  Ethnologists  such  as  Agassiz,  Morton,  and  Owen 
have  been  grouping  mankind  into  indigenous  races,  through 
all  the  hues  of  climate,  from  the  Ethiopian  sable  to  the  rose 
of  Circassia;  grading  them  in  distinct  classes,  by  all  degrees 
of  the  facial  angle,  from  the  low  forehead  of  the  ape  to  the 
profile  of  the  Caucasian ;  and  following  them  backward 
from  one  epoch  to  another  beyond  the  time  of  Moses,  through 
all  the  dynasties  of  the  Pharaohs.  Philologists  such  as 
Wilhelm  Humboldt,  Max  Miiller,  and  Schleicher  have  been 
unfolding  human  speech  into  its  formative  stages,  the  radical, 
the  agglutinate,  the  amalgamate;  tracing  its  roots  to  imita- 
tive sounds  or  natural  cries,  and  even  expanding  its  growth 
through  long  eras  of  fossil  dialects,  rudimentary  letters  and 
phonetic  types,  between-  the  extremes  of  animal  and  human 
expression,  from  the  chatter  of  an  Australian  forest  to  the 
comedies  of  Shakespeare  and  Moliere.  Archaeologists  such 
as  Lubbock,  Stevens,  and  Westropp  have  been  sketching 
human  culture  through  its  pre-historic  ages  of  stone,  of 
bronze,  and  of  iron,  from  the  flint-chip  to  the  steam-engine, 
from  the  rude  cairn  to  the  marbles  of  the  Parthenon,  and  ex- 
hibiting the  savage  peoples  of  the  earth  in  advancing  stages, 
the  hunter,  the  herdsman,  the  farmer,  during  long  epochs,  ere 
civilization  was  known.  And  archaso-geologists,  so-called, 
such  as  Schmerling,  Lartet,  and  Lyell,  have  been  restoring 
the  flora  and  fauna  of  the  pre-historic  periods,  the  beech  and 
the  horse  of  the  iron  age,  the  oak  and  the  goat  of  the  bronze 
age,  the  pine  and  the"  reindeer  of  the  stone  age,  the  bear  and 
the  glacier  of  the  savage  epoch,  until  at  last  they  have  carried 
the  torch  into  a  primeval  cavern,  among  mammoth  bones  and 
simian  skulls,  as  the  rude  birth-place  of  civilized  man. 

And  the  concluding  question  as  to  the  destiny  of  mankind, 
the  aim  and  prospect  of  the  whole  human  evolution,  at  length 
opens  two  opposite  views;  on  the  one  side,  the  prediction  of 
a  regenerated  race  upon  the  scene  of  a  renovated  earth,  with 
the  wilderness  budding  as  a  rose,  the  lion  transformed  into  a 
lamb,  and  man  again  an  innocent  child  of  paradise;  and  on 
the  other  side,  the  prognosis  of  a  gradual  decline  as  well  as 


44^  TJie  Umpirage  of  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

growth  of  humanity,  when  the  noblest  races  shall  have  lost 
their  ancestral  vigor,  the  richest  tongues  their  classic  grace, 
the  finest  arts  their  pristine  purity ;  when  even  the  productive 
stores  and  sustaining  powers  of  nature  herself  shall  have  been 
exhausted,  and  the  lingering  plants,  animals,  and  effete  tribes 
of  men  shall  fade  away  like  the  leaves  of  autumn,  while  the 
earth  veers  back  into  her  glacial  epoch,  and  the  sun  can  no 
longer  vivify  the  nations  that  have  basked  in  his  rays. 

Problems  in  the  Psychical  Sciences. 

Our  survey  has  now  brought  us  to  the  verge  of  those 
higher  psychical  sciences  which,  as  they  include  the  nearest 
human  interests,  are  bristling  with  portentous  questions,  not 
likely  to  be  treated  in  that  passionless  mood  which  belongs 
to  scientific  inquiries,  and  yet  all  the  more  imperiously 
claiming  our  attention. 

Psychology,  at  the  head  of  these  sciences,  is  already  pressing 
upon  us  such  problems  as  the  origin,  the  development  and  the 
destiny  of  the  individual,  of  his  cognitions,  his  emotions,  his 
volitions,  and  is  presenting  like  divergent  opinions;  on  the 
one  side,  such  new  hypotheses  as  those  of  Herbert  Spencer, 
Maudsley,  and  Moleschott,  that  mind  is  a  product  of  matter, 
that  the  will  is  a  developed  force  acting  under  laws,  and  that 
death  is  the  dissolution  of  that  matter,  the  conversion  of  that 
force;  and  on  the  other  side,  such  traditional  dogmas  as  those 
of  Lactantius,  Augustine,  and  Jerome,  that  the  soul  has  been 
created  in  the  body,  that  the  will  may  be  regenerated  by 
irresistible  grace,  and  that  the  spirit  will  be  reclothed  here- 
after with  the  whole  present  body. 

Sociology  is  not  far  behind  with  such  problems  as  the 
origin,  the  development,  and  the  destiny  of  society;  of  its  arts, 
its  sciences,  its  politics;  and  is  branching  with  a  similar  di- 
vergence of  views ;  on  the  one  side,  the  hypotheses  of  such 
civilians  as  Locke,  Vico,  and  Draper,  that  the  State  is  a  social 
contract ;  that  the  history  of  nations  proceeds  under  periodic 
and  progressive  laws,  and  that  societies,  like  individuals,  phy- 
siologically viewed,  have  their  infancy,  youth,  age  and  decline; 
are  born  but  to  grow  and  die;  and  on  the  other  side,  the 
dogmas  of  such  ecclesiastics  as  Bellarmin,  Bossuet  and  Ed- 


CHAP.  I.]  Present  State  of  the  Sciences.  449 

wards,  that  the  Church  is  an  absolute  theocracy,  that  Provi- 
dence throughout  history  has  been  a  systematic  judgment  of 
the  nations  on  behalf  of  the  Church,  and  that  the  nations  are 
yet  to  be  subdued  by  the  miraculous  return  and  reign  of 
Christ. 

Theology  also  is  emerging  with  new  problems,  such  as  the 
origin,  the  development,  and  the  destiny  of  religion,  of  its 
traditions,  its  creeds,  and  its  cults,  and  is  already  breaking 
into  hostile  camps;  on  the  one  side,  the  votaries  of  mere 
natural  religion,  such  as  Theodore  Parker,  Max  Miiller,  and 
Comte,  holding  that  there  is  one  essential,  universal  faith 
derived  from  the  light  of  nature ;  that  there  has  been  a  scale 
and  growth  of  religions  in  history  through  degrees  of  rela- 
tive perfection,  and  that  the  perfect  religion  of  the  future  will 
consist  in  the  deification  of  humanity,  the  worship  of  woman- 
hood, and  the  hierarchy  of  science:  and  on  the  other  side, 
the  disciples  of  revealed  religion,  such  as  Leland,  Paley,  and 
Chalmers,  maintaining  that  a  revelation  of  religion  is  neces- 
sary as  well  as  important;  that  there  has  been  a  primitive 
miraculous  revelation,  of  which  other  pretended  revelations 
are  but  corruptions  or  counterfeits,  and  that  this  revealed 
religion  is  destined  to  prevail  over  all  other  religions  by 
supernatural  conversions  and  judgments  at  the  end  of  the 
present  dispensation. 

And  the  general  question  to  be  gathered  from  all  the  psy- 
chical sciences  at  length  presents  to  us  on  the  one  side  the 
opinion  that  the  regenerate  soul,  the  Church,  and  the  coming 
millennium  are  parts  of  a  new  spiritual  system  ensuing  upon 
the  old  material  creation,  and  on  the  other  side,  the  conjec- 
ture that  religion,  science,  politics,  art,  all  were  once  potential 
in  the  flames  of  the  sun,  and  must  yet  revert  to  the  fiery 
cloud  from  whence  they  sprang. 

Problems  in  the  Metaphysical  Sciences. 
Behind  these  problems  of  the  physical  and  psychical 
sciences  are  others  still  more  recondite  and  abstruse,  the 
metaphysical  questions  as  to  the  essential  nature  of  mind  and 
matter,  and  the  absolute  reality  before  and  beneath  all  pheno- 
mena; questions  which  on  the  one  side  have  at  length  issued 
3-G 


45  O  The  Umpirage  of  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

in  the  opinions  of  Herbart,  Lotze,  and  Fechner  that  pheno- 
mena, both  material  and  spiritual,  are  the  expressions  of  real 
essences  or  conscious  monads,  or  self-manifesting  souls; 
together  with  the  extreme  speculations  of  Hegel,  Shopenhauer 
and  Hartmann,  that  the  intelligible  universe  is  a  logical 
process  of  absolute  reason  and  thought,  or  a  product  of  blind 
primordial  force  and  human  will,  or  a  historical  development 
of  unconscious  force  and  will  into  conscious  thought  and 
reason :  questions  which,  on  the  other  side,  have  scarcely 
advanced  beyond  the  ancient  dogmas,  that  body  and  soul  are 
but  distinct  substances  co-acting  as  instruments  of  divine  pur- 
poses, and  that  there  is  a  trinity  of  Father,  Son,  and  Spirit  in 
the  self-existent  Jehovah  manifested  to  us  through  the  mira- 
cles of  creation,  incarnation,  atonement,  and  final  judgment. 
At  the  same  time,  as  the  issue  of  modern  metaphysical 
thought,  we  have  at  the  one  extreme  an  optimism  which 
seeks  to  identify  the  revealed  Jehovah  as  the  one  Absolute 
Reason,  the  first  and  final  cause  of  a  perfected  creation ;  and 
at  the  other  extreme,  a  pessimism  which  would  exhibit  the 
developing  universe  as  an  abortive  paradox,  beginning  and 
ending  in  hopless  contradiction. 

And  high  above  all  these  problems  in  the  different  sciences 
we  may  now  behold  the  great  summary  question  as  to  the 
course  and  goal  of  the  sciences  themselves,  as  to  their  logical 
processes,  their  historical  laws,  and  their  ultimate  limits.  On 
the  one  side  we  have  the  decisions  of  Bacon,  D'Alembert, 
Comte,  Mill,  and  Spencer,  that  positive  science  is  restricted 
to  facts  and  their  laws  without  inquiring  into  their  first  and 
final  causes,  that  the  more  advanced  sciences  have  historically 
reached  this  positive  state  only  by  excluding  all  inquiry  into 
causes,  and  thus  outgrowing  and  destroying  theology  and 
metaphysics,  and  that  their  final  goal  is  sheer  nescience  or  the 
recognition  of  an  unknowable  reality  as  the  ground  of  all 
knowable  phenomena.  On  the  other  side  we  have  the 
opinions  of  Tertullian,  Aquinas,  Calvin  and  Butler,  that  the 
unknowable  to  man  is  revealable  by  God  through  miracu- 
lously attested  communications,  that  it  has  been  the  function 
of  such  revelation  to  remedy  human  ignorance  and  expose 
false  science,  and  that  ultimately  all  earthly  science  for  the 


CHAP.  I.]  Present  State  of  the  Seiences.  45 1 

individual  will  be  lost  in  beatific  vision,  and  for  the  race  will  be 
eclipsed  by  the  millennial  light  of  a  new  apocalypse. 

Such  then  is  the  present  state  of  the  sciences.  While  they 
embrace  immense  bodies  of  exact  knowledge,  too  vast  for 
any  one  mind  to  master,  too  magnificent  for  even  the  imagi- 
nation to  depict,  they  also  present  a  bewildering  mass  of  mi- 
solved  problems  with  opposite  h3'potheses  and  dogmas 
respecting  them  which  have  been  held  by  the  master-spirits 
of  former  times  and  which  still  engross  the  leading  intellects 
of  our  day.  Renewing  the  remark  with  which  this  chapter 
began,  that  the  aim  has  been  simply  to  state  these  questions 
with  all  fairness  and  not  to  discuss  them,  we  shall  now  submit 
some  deductions  from  the  survey,  which  seem  almost  to  lie 
upon  the  surface  in  full  view  of  all  parties. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  plain   that  these  questions  are  not 
purely  scientific.     They  have  not  been  so  treated  in  past  ages, 
and  they  are  not  so  treated  at  the  present  day.     No  com^- 
tent  scientific  authority  has  yet  pronounced  upon  them:     The 
British    Association    has    not    decided    them.      The    French 
Academy  has  not  decided  them.     The  different  Italian,  Ger- 
man, and   American   associations   have   not   decided    them. 
There  is  not  even  any  spontaneous  concurrence  of  scientific 
men  respecting  them,  such  as  that  which  attends  all  observed 
facts,  ascertained  laws  and  approved  theories.     It  cannot  be 
claimed  that  the  great  names  in  science  have  ever  been,  or  are 
now,  arrayed  against  the  religious  view  of  them.     And  it  is 
not  too  much  to  say  that  they  can  never  be  decided  by  any 
merely  scientific  process.     The  origin  and  destiny  of  nebulae, 
suns  and  planets,  of  man  with  his  individual,  social  and  reli- 
gious   interests,    of   the  universe   through   all    its    eras    and 
phases,   are  surely  problems  which,  by  no  inductive  search 
among  existing  facts  and  laws,  can  be  fully  brought  within 
the  revision  and  prevision  of  science,   but  must   sooner  or 
later,  as  her  most  loyal  votaries  are  now  confessing,  lead  her 
to  that  verge   of  the   knowable  where   her    torch' becomes 
quenched  in  the  unknowable  and  she  has  no  more  light  to 
shed. 

In  the  second  place,  it  is  also  clear  that  these  questions  are 


452  The  Umpirage  of  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

not  merely  religious.  If  they  were  so  treated  in  former  times, 
they  are  not  so  treated  to-day.  The  religious  authorities 
which  have  ventured  to  pronounce  upon  them  have  not 
settled  them.  The  Papal  Syllabus  has  not  settled  them. 
The  Evangelical  Alliance  has  not  settled  them.  The  differ- 
ent ecclesiastical  councils  have  not  settled  them.  There  is 
not  even  such  general  agreement  of  religious  people  con- 
cerning them  as  that  which  belongs  to  the  chief  essentials 
of  the  Christian  faith.  It  cannot  be  held  that  the  great  names 
in  religion  have  always  been  or  are  now  joined  together 
against  the  scientific  view  of  them.  And  it  is  safe  to  say 
that  by  no  purely  religious  method  can  they  be  ever  settled. 
The  attempt  of  all  churches  and  sects  combined,  through  any 
mere  grammatic  interpretation  of  the  Holy  Scriptures,  under 
pretense  of  infallible  guidance,  and  in  contempt  of  all  other 
means  of  knowledge,  to  show  how  the  heavens  and  earth  and 
man  were  created  and  will  be  renewed,  would  simply  remand 
religion  to  the  superstition  and  bigotry  of  the  dark  ages,  and 
at  length,  as  her  most  devout  disciples  will  admit,  dim  her 
light  at  the  very  points  where  it  should  shine  most  brightly. 

In  the  third  place,  it  will  follow  that  these  questions,  being 
partly  scientific  and  partly  religious,  are  strictly  philosophical, 
and  should  be  so  treated  by  all  parties.  That  they  are  partly 
scientific  and  partly  religious  is  a  fact  that  runs  through  all 
the  past.  From  their  very  origin  they  have  involved  both 
elements.  The  history  of  neither  could  be  written  without 
that  of  the  other.  The  successive  conflicts  and  alliances  of 
the  scientific  and  religious  classes  at  the  great  epochs  of  civi- 
lization, among  the  Sophists,  ^mong  the  Fathers,  among  the 
Schoolmen,  among  the  Reformers  have  been  the  very  rhythm 
of  human  progress.  There  is  scarcely  a  dogma  which  has  not 
served  as  an  hypothesis  in  science,  as  there  is  scarcely  an 
hypothesis  which  has  not  been  used  for  a  dogma  in  religion. 
The  great  names  in  each,  or  at  least  the  masters  in  both,  have 
ever  striven  to  keep  them  together  rather  than  to  drive  them 
apart.  Plato  and  Origen,  Augustine  and  Erigena,  Albertus 
and  Roger  Bacon,  Francis  Bacon  and  Butler,  from  age  to  age, 
have  illustrated  their  essential  oneness.  It  could  be  shown, 
indeed,  that  the  largest  minds  on  both  sides  have  long  per- 


CHAP.  I.]  Present  State  of  the  Sciejices.  453 

ceived,  that  their  own  pccuhar  processes  and  exigencies  soon 
bring  them  face  to  face  in  the  mutual  recognition  of  knowable 
facts  which  the  one  must  discover  and  of  unknowable  reali- 
ties which  the  other  must  reveal.  And  the  common  ground 
between  them,  formed  by  their  intersecting  spheres,  instead 
of  narrowing  has  been  enlarging  with  the  lapse  of  time  and 
the  growth  of  knowledge,  until  now  it  has  become  not  merely 
a  conspicuous  arena  in  the  philosophical  world,  but  even  a 
field  of  popular  discussion. 

Of  this  fact  there  could  scarcely  have  been  a  more  striking 
proof  than  the  recent  brilliant  and  lucid  address  of  Professor 
Tyndall  from  the  chair  of  the  British  Association — an  address 
widely  and  justly  praised,  as  well  for  the  graces  of  its  style  as 
for  the  vigor,  acuteness,  and  breadth  of  its  thought,  the  eleva- 
tion, courage,  and  candor  of  its  tone.  That  the  questions 
which  it  broaches  could  be  so  discussed  and  received  in  a 
scientific  body,  would  be  a  full  vindication,  were  any  needed, 
of  their  fitness  to  such  occasions.  It  is  right  that  the  most 
cultured  intelligence  of  the  age  should  be  concentrated  upon 
them,  if  only  they  are  held  under  the  dry  light  of  pure  science 
within  the  purview  of  philosophy.  How  to  adjust  them  has 
indeed  become  "  the  problem  of  problems  at  the  present 
hour;"  and  that,  not  merely  that  we  may  "yield  reasonable 
satisfaction  to  a  religious  sentiment  in  the  emotional  nature" 
(for  with  this  science  may  have  little  to  do),  but  also,  and 
chiefly,  that  we  may  meet  a  logical  demand  of  the  under- 
standing, a  crowning  want  of  the  intellect  of  man. 

Perhaps  the  true  philosophical  nature  of  the  problems  which 
have  been  stated  could  not  be  better  illustrated,  for  the  present 
purpose  at  least,  than  by  means  of  the  rhetorical  device  so 
skillfully  employed  in  that  paper.  A  disciple  of  Lucretius,  it 
will  be  remembered,  is  supposed  to  have  engaged  Bishop 
Butler  in  an  encounter  of  wits  over  one  of  the  chapters  of  his 
immortal  Analogy ;  the  combatants  having  been  armed  with 
the  added  knowledge  of  our  time,  like  Milton's  embattled 
angels,  to  dare  an  argument  of  mysteries.  It  is  easy  to  paint 
portraits  to  suit  ourselves  while  we  hold  the  pencil,  and  there 
is  always  some  risk  of  unfairness  when  speaking  of  another. 
But  we  may  avoid  such  dangers  by  simply  fancying  the  two 


454  The  Umpirage  of  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

disputants  to  reappear  at  the  point  which  their  discussion  had 
reached,  and  allowing  them  to  proceed  with  it  a  step  further 
toward  its  logical  issue.  Let  the  Bishop  speak  first,  and  the 
disciple  of  Lucretius  shall  have  the  last  word. 

"Before  we  leave  this  subject  of  living  agents,  most  noble 
Lucretian,  I  beg  to  remind  you  that  there  is  involved  in  it 
a  very  interesting  question  which  you  have  scarcely  touched 
upon.  You  will  remember  that  my  whole  argument  had 
reference  not  so  much  to  the  nature  of  the  living  agent  or 
self,  as  to  its  destiny.  I  was  trying  to  prove  inductively, 
from  observed  facts,  that  our  survival  after  death  is  as  pro- 
bable, if  not  as  certain,  as  any  other  scientific  prevision 
attempted  under  like  conditions.  Beginning  with  these  two 
great  presumptions  or  high  probabilities  upon  which  all 
positive  science  proceeds,  the  uniformity  and  continuance  of 
nature,  I  argued  that  we  shall  continue  to  live  hereafter, 
unless  it  be  imagined  that  death,  of  which  we  know  nothing, 
destroys  us ;  and  against  this  mere  imaginary  presumption  I 
brought  forward  various  scientific  presumptions  afforded  by 
observation  and  experience,  such  as  the  following:  That  if 
death  means,  as  you  affirm,  the  dissolution  of  your  atoms, 
then  your  essential  bulk  may  be  such  that  you  cannot  be 
dissolved,  like  that  infinitesimal  germ  out  of  which  has  been 
developed  your  whole  present  self,  together  with  the  inherited 
traits  of  your  ancestors :  That  already  most  of  your  atoms 
have  been  dissolved  and  replaced  every  seven,  ten  or  twenty 
years,  not  merely  bones,  tissues,  nerves,  but  the  brain  itself, 
dying  a  thousand  deaths :  That  large  portions  even  of  your 
yervous  atoms  might  be  dissolved  without  being  replaced  and 
you  still  be  conscious  of  your  phantom  limb,  or  go  on  think- 
ing with  but  half  of  your  brain:  That  through  all  these 
dissolutions,  that  hidden  self  of  yours,  picture  it  as  you  will, 
persists  and  survives,  with  its  peculiar  powers  of  thought  and 
feeling,  whatever  they  may  be,  even  amid  disease,  injury  and 
madness  itself:  That  after  the  last  more  rapid  dissolution, 
sooner  or  later,  should  you  recover  that  mysterious  conscious- 
ness of  which  you  have  spoken  as  coming  and  going  so 
strangely,  in  some  new  etherial  organism  as  unlike  its  old  coun- 
terpart  as  that   god-like   form   was    itself  unlike  its  earlier 


CHAP.  I.]  Present  State  of  the  Sciences.  455 

icthyic  germ,  or  as  the  brilliant  insect  is  unlike  its  cast-off 
larva;  some  spiritual  body,  wholly  imperceptible  by  our 
present  senses,  yet  itself  gifted  with  more  than  microscopic 
insight,  locomotive  swiftness  or  telegraphic  thought ;  all 
these  marvels  would  be  no  greater  than  are  daily  passing 
before  your  eyes:  That  though  existing  plants  and  animals, 
having  shown  no  such  power  of  individual  progression,  should 
perish  with  their  species  and  be  replaced  by  other  and  fitter 
forms  in  that  second  state  into  which  you  had  been  born — 
'  With  all  the  circle  of  the  wise, 
The  perfect  flower  of  human  time,' 

yet  even  this  would  be  only  such  meet  survival  as  now  sepa- 
rates us  from  primeval  ferns  and  dragons,  a  just  predominance 
of  the  higher  over  the  lower  forces  in  the  planetary  life,  a 
strictly  cosmic  birth,  as  free  from  miracle  or  catastrophe  as 
the  coming  of  an  infant  into  the  world  or  the  transformation 
of  the  earth  in  Spring;  in  a  word,  'as  natural  as  the  visible 
known  cause  of  things.' 

"  You  will  observe  that  this  argument,  in  its  nature,  is  a  mere 
scientific  hypothesis,  and  not  a  religious  dogma.  I  have  care- 
fully excluded  from  it  any  theological,  metaphysical  or  even 
ethical  opinions  which  might  seem  to  prejudice  it  in  your 
eyes.  You  may  have  your  own  opinions  upon  such  points, 
and  the  argument  will  still  hold.  You  may  picture  yourself 
as  the  merest  combination  of  atoms  that  the  materialist  can 
conceive;  but  I  have  shown  you  that  the  dissolution  of  our 
'gross  organized  bodies  would  not  be  our  destruction;  even 
without  determining  whether  our  living  substances  be  mate- 
rial or  immaterial'  You  may  imagine  that  combination  of 
your  atoms  to  have  been  as  fortuitous  as  any  the  atheist  can 
trace;  but  'that  we  are  to  live  hereafter  is  just  as  recon- 
cilable with  the  scheme  of  atheism,  and  as  well  to  be 
accounted  for  by  it,  as  that  we  are  now  alive  is  ;  and  therefore 
nothing  can  be  more  absurd  than  to  argue  from  that  scheme 
that  there  can  be  no  future  state.'  You  may  even  discard  the 
moral  motives  of  such  a  state  for  any  humane  virtues  that  the 
secularist  may  practice,  as  '  if  it  were  certain  that  our  future 
interest  no  way  depended  upon  our  present  behaviour;'  yet, 
'curiosity  could  not  but  sometimes  bring  a  subject  in  which 


456  The  Umpirage  of  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

we  may  be  so  highly  interested  to  our  thoughts,  especially 
upon  the  mortality  of  others  or  the  near  prospect  of  our  own ; ' 
and  it  is  in  the  light  of  such  mere  curiosity,  as  a  question  of 
pure  science,  that  I  have  put  it  before  you,  to  be  tested  as 
coolly  as  you  would  dissect  an  embryo  or  a  chrysalis." 

Lucretius,  if  history  speaks  truly,  was  not  the  man  to  shirk  a 
question  because  of  its  logical  consequences,  and  we  can  fancy 
without  much  effort  what  sort  of  rejoinder  a  true  Lucretian 
would  make  to  the  Bishop's  reasoning. 

"I  have  listened,"  he  might  say,  "to  your  ingenious  argu- 
ment with  the  interest  of  a  philosopher.  It  bears  upon  a 
subject  which  engrossed  some  of  the  finest  minds  of  Greece 
and  Rome,  from  Socrates  and  Plato  to  Cicero  and  Seneca. 
It  was  not,  you  are  aware,  the  doctrine  of  Epicurus,  nor  that 
which  I  learned  from  my  master.  He  taught  me  that  from 
atoms  all  things  have  come,  and  to  atoms  they  must  return. 
Through  their  endless  compositions  and  decompositions  the 
forms  of  beast,  bird,  and  flower  appear  and  disappear,  come 
and  go,  and  are  seen  no  more.  Even  the  etherial  and  lumi- 
nous particles  of  the  soul  itself,  together  with  the  grosser 
body  through  which  they  are  diffused,  must  scatter  and 
vanish  like  down  before  the  wind.  Death  is  therefore  the 
mere  dissolution  of  our  own  peculiar  atoms,  and  there  can 
be  nothing  to  survive  the  disintegration  of  the  body. 

"  And  this  theory  he  framed  for  the  purpose  of  counteract- 
ing certain  dogmas  which  dominated  in  his  time.  He  saw 
men  everywhere  terrified  with  omens  and  disasters,  which 
they  attributed  to  the  anger  of  the  gods,  and  in  order  to 
dispel  their  fears,  depicted  those  ideal  beings  in  a  remote 
heaven  of  apathy,  sublimely  indifferent  to  mortals,  while 
nature  moved  on  beneath,  with  her  measureless  surges  of 
atoms,  majestically  as  the  roll  of  his  own  hexameter.  He 
found  his  countrymen  wasting  their  best  days  in  alternate 
dread  and  hope  of  Tartarean  torments  and  Elysian  raptures, 
and  admonished  them  that  the  truest  and  highest  virtue 
would  scorn  such  selfish  motives,  and  only  look  for  the  reward 
of  duty  in  a  tranquil  enjoyment  of  the  present  life.  And 
that  other  remaining  terror  of  death,  which  was  ever  shading 
their  path,  he  stripped  before  them  into  an  empty  negation  as 


CHAP.  I.]  Present  State  of  the  Sciences.  457 

the  mere  loss  of  life,  the  last  atomic  thrill  with  which  to 
glide  into  the  passionless  calm  of  the  gods.  He  lived  about 
sixty  years  before  the  Christian  era.  As  I  have  explained  to 
you,  he  died  in  the  faith  in  which  he  had  lived,  and  by  his 
own  tragic  fate  illustrated  his  creed  as  he  stood,  in  the  prime 
of  life,  at  the  height  of  his  fame,  about  to  execute  that  purpose 
from  which  the  more  irresolute  Hamlet  quailed: 

'  And  therefore  now 
Let  her,  that  is  the  womb  and  tomb  of  all, 
Great  Nature,  take,  and  forcing  far  apart. 
Those  blind  beginnings  that  have  made  me  man, 
Dash  them  anew  together  at  her  will 
Through  all  her  cycles.' 

Now  I  do  not  say,  I  have  not  said,  that  I  adopt  these  theo- 
logical and  ethical  opinions  of  my  master,  though  they  were 
essential  parts  of  his  system ;  but  if  I  should  lay  them  aside, 
as  you  have  laid  aside  yours,  there  would  then  remain  this 
mere  hypothesis  before  us  to  be  tested  like  any  other  by  the 
facts.  And  it  strikes  me  simply  as  a  strong  physical  analogy 
which  still  lacks  confirmation.  Let  me  show  you  how  far  I 
might  go  with  you.  You  have  proved  that  death  may  be 
but  the  birth  into  another  life,  that  there  is  nothing  improb- 
able in  a  future  state  into  which  we  may  pass,  'just  as 
naturally  as  we  came  into  the  present.'  Seneca  surmised  as 
much  when  he  likened  those  who  look  for  a  future  life  to 
children  in  the  womb  preparing  for  this  world.  You  have 
also  projected  into  the  future  newer  and  higher  organic  types 
beyond  those  which,  from  the  mollusk  up  to  man,  have  been 
unfolded  in  the  past.  Such  attempted  prevision  cannot  seem 
wholly  unscientific  to  a  Lucretian,  who  believes  it  would  have 
been  possible  '  from  a  knowledge  of  the  properties  of  the 
cosmic  vapor  to  have  predicted  the  state  of  the  fauna  of 
Britain  in  the  year  1869  with  as  much  certainty  as  one  can 
say  what  will  happen  to  the  vapor  of  the  breath  on  a  cold 
winter's  day.'  Nor  have  we  any  right  '  to  assume  that  man's 
present  faculties  end  the  series,'  which  has  extended  all  the 
way  '  from  the  Iguanodon  and  his  cotemporarics  to  the  Presi- 
dents and  members  of  the  British  Association.'  But  at  this 
point  the  difficulties  begin.  You  have  not  supplied  all  the 
3-" 


45^  l^^i^  Umpirage  of  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

intermediate  links  in  your  ideal  scale  between  our  future  and 
our  present  organized  selves.  You  have  not  shown  the  one 
evolving  out  of  the  other,  the  higher  out  of  the  lower.  You 
have  not  exhibited  that  coming  psychical  body  as  originating 
among  the  spaceless  atoms  or  punctual  forces  or  plastic  pro- 
cesses of  the  present  organism,  nor  exposed  to  view  the  ger- 
mination of  its  peculiar  faculties  and  powers.  You  have  not 
proved  the  capacity  of  existing  earth  and  man  to  produce 
such  spiritual  bodies.  You  have  not  determined  whether  the 
interval  between  them  and  us  will  be  brief  or  long ;  whether 
they  will  recover  consciousness  soon  or  late ;  whether  they 
will  be  developed  slowly  or  in  a  moment.  In  a  word,  the 
evidences  of  such  a  metamorphosis  cannot  be  gathered  from 
the  existing  state  of  knowledge,  and  if  immediately  forth- 
coming would  appear  little  short  of  miraculous.  Upon  one 
point,  however,  we  are  agreed.  You  concede  to  science  those 
rights  of  unrestricted  search  and  free  discussion  which  have 
been  so  hardly  won  in  '  the  progress  of  learning  and  of 
liberty.'  That  is  all  I  ask.  And  I  beg  to  assure  you  that  in 
the  event  of  any  other  trustworthy  proofs  of  a  future  state 
being  produced,  it  would  be  no  bar  to  the  theory  even  in  the 
view  of  a  Lucretian,  that  it  should  be  found  coincident  with 
the  Jewish  and  Christian  prejudices  of  an  honored  prelate 
whom  no  one  admires  more  than  I  do.  On  the  contrary,  to 
receive  and  act  upon  it,  at  least  as  a  working  hypothesis, 
would  be  but  the  dictate  of  Greek  wisdom  as  well  as  Roman 
virtue." 

Leaving  these  somewhat  prejudiced  opponents,  let  us  now 
turn  to  another  historic  personage,  accepted  by  them  and  by 
us  all,  with  the  concurrent  voice  of  more  than  two  centuries 
of  trial,  as  an  umpire, 

"  Whom  a  wise  king  and  nature  chose 
Lord  Chancellor  of  both  their  laws." 

Francis  Bacon  was  neither  a  mere  scientist  nor  a  mere  divine, 
but  a  civilian  and  a  philosopher  who  embraced  within  the 
view  of  his  judicial  intellect  the  most  advanced  science  and 
the  best  divinity  of  his  time.  He  projected  and  partly  con- 
structed a  magnificent  "  Instauration  of  the  Sciences,"  which 


CHAP.  I.]  Present  State  of  the  Sciences.  459 

was  designed  to  include  all  existing  knowledge,  both  divine 
and  human,  in  one  comprehensive  system.  May  we  find  any 
decisions  of  this  high  authority  that  will  bear  upon  the  con- 
troversy ? 

At  one  moment,  indeed,  he  seems  to  lean  toward  the  side 
of  Lucretius.  Having  spoken  of  a  sensitive  or  produced  soul, 
which  he  describes  as  derived  from  the  elements,  and  common 
to  man  and  the  brute,  he  urges  more  diligent  inquiry  into  its 
faculties  of  voluntary  motion  .and  sensibility,  and  as  to  its 
nature,  distinctly  allows  it  must  be  material,  "  a  corporeal 
substance,  attenuated  by  heat  and  rendered  invisible,  as  a 
subtile  breath  or  aura,  of  a  flamy  and  airy  nature,  diffused 
through  the  whole  body,  but  in  perfect  creatures  residing 
chiefly  in  the  head  and  thence  running  through  the  nerves, 
being  fed  and  recruited  by  the  spirituous  blood  of  the  arteries, 
as  Telesius  and  his  follower  Donius  have  usefully  shown." 

At  another  moment  his  judgment  is  on  the  side  of  Butler. 
Superadding  to  the  sensitive  or  produced  soul  that  rational 
or  inspired  soul  which  proceeds  from  the  breath  of  God,  and 
distinguishes  man  from  the  brutes,  he  concludes  that  "  in- 
quiries with  relation  to  its  nature,  as  whether  it  be  native  or 
adventitious,  separable  or  inseparable,  mortal  or  immortal, 
how  far  subject  to  laws  of  matter,  how  far  not,  and  the  like — 
though  they  might  be  more  thoroughly  sifted  in  philosophy 
than  hitherto  they  have  been — in  the  end  must  be  turned 
over  to  religion  for  determination  and  decision ;  since  no 
knowledge  of  the  substance  of  the  rational  soul  can  be  had 
from  philosophy,  but  must  be  derived  from  the  same  divine 
inspiration,  whence  the  substance  thereof  originally  pro- 
ceeded." 

At  the  same  time,  he  is  careful  to  vindicate  such  a  method 
of  turning  the  scale  by  Scriptural  authority  as  still  consistent 
and  just  to  both  parties:  "  We  would  not  have  borrowed  this 
division  from  divinity,  had  it  not  also  agreed  with  philosophy. 
For  there  are  many  excellencies  of  the  human  soul  above  the 
souls  of  brutes,  manifest  even  to  those  who  philosophize  only 
according  to  sense.  And  wherever  so  many  and  such  great 
excellencies  are  found,  a  specific  difference  should  always  be 
made.     We  do  not,  therefore,  approve  that  confused  and  pro- 


460  The  Umpirage  of  Philosophy.  [fart  ii. 

miscuous  manner  of  the  philosophers  in  treating  the  functions 
of  the  soul,  as  if  the  soul  of  man  differed  in  degree  rather 
than  species  from  the  soul  of  brutes,  as  the  sun  differs  from 
the  stars,  of  gold  from  other  metals." 

And  this  is  but  an  example  of  the  general  manner  in  which 
the  great  acknowledged  master  of  philosophy  would  treat 
that  whole  class  of  scientific  and  religious  problems  which  we 
have  described  as  connected  with  the  origin,  course  and 
destiny  of  nature. 

Now,  he  yields  to  science  all  it  can  claim,  as  he  argues  so 
eloquently  that  the  inquiry  for  final  causes  is  wrongly  placed 
in  physics,  and  hath  made  a  great  devastation  in  that  province : 
"And,  therefore,  the  natural  philosophies  of  Democritus  and 
others,  who  allow  no  God  or  mind  in  the  frame  of  things,  but 
attribute  the  structure  of  the  universe  to  infinite  essays  and 
trials  of  nature,  or  what  they  call  fate  or  fortune,  and  assign 
the  causes  of  particular  things  to  the  necessity  of  matter  with- 
out any  intermixture  of  final  causes,  seem,  so  far  as  we  can 
judge  from  the  remains  of  their  philosophy  much  more  solid, 
and  to  have  gone  deeper  into  nature  with  regard  to  physical 
causes,  than  the  philosophy  of  Aristotle  or  Plato;  and  this 
only  because  they  never  meddled  with  final  causes,  which  the 
others  were  perpetually  inculcating." 

Again,  he  reserves  for  religion  all  that  it  demands,  while  he 
shows  that  final  causes,  when  kept  where  they  belong  within 
the  bounds  of  theology  and  metaphysics,  are  not  repugnant 
to  physical  causes,  but  agree  excellently  with  them  as  ex- 
pressing the  intentions  of  Providence  in  the  consequences  of 
nature:  "But  Democritus  and  Epicurus  when  they  advanced 
their  atoms  were  thus  far  tolerated  by  some,  but  when  they 
asserted  the  fabric  of  all  things  to  be  raised  by  a  fortuitous 
concourse  of  these  atoms,  without  the  help  of  mind,  they 
became  universally  ridiculous.  So  far  are  physical  causes 
from  drawing  men  off  from  God  and  Providence,  that,  on  the 
contrary,  the  philosophers  employed  in  discovering  them  can 
find  no  rest  but  by  fllying  to  God  and  Providence  at  last." 

And  when  we  inquire  how  these  two  adjacent  provinces 
are  to  be  preserved  and  adjusted,  we  may  hear  him  discours- 
ing of  a  Primary  Philosophy,  or  mother  of  all  the  sciences, 


CHAP.  I  ]  Present  State  of  the  Sciences.  461 

by  whom  they  are  to  be  cherished,  and  around  whom  their 
wrangHng  sisterhood  is  to  be  gathered  in  harmony.  His 
conception  of  such  a  philosophy  may  seem  crude  and  vague, 
but  not  more  so  than  might  have  been  expected  in  that  age. 
In  fact  he  is  inchned  to  note  it  as  still  wanting;  and  in  terms 
that  almost  exactly  describe  the  exigency  upon  us  at  this 
hour:  "For  I  find  a  certain  rhapsody  of  natural  theology, 
logic  and  physics,  delivered  in  a  certain  sublimity  of  discourse, 
by  such  as  aim  at  being  admired  for  standing  on  the  pin- 
nacles of  the  sciences ;  but  what  we  mean  is,  without 
ambition,  to  design  some  general  science,  for  the  reception 
of  axioms,  not  peculiar  to  any  one  science,  but  common  to  a 
number  of  them." 

The  three  personages  before  us  have  thus  illustrated  the 
claims  to  which  they  respectively  belong,  and  the  interests 
which  they  represent.  Philosophy,  in  the  best  sense  of  the 
word,  is  the  umpire  between  science  and  religion.  As  origi- 
nally defined  by  Pythagoras  and  Cicero,  it  is  itself  the  science 
of  things  divine  and  hum.an,  together  with  their  causes.  As  that 
academic  faculty  which  is  complementary  to  the  others,  it  in- 
cludes whatsoever  is  common  to  both  the  secular  and  sacred 
departments  of  learning.  As  the  science  of  knowledge,  it 
aims  to  ascertain  inductively  the  validity,  the  limits  and  the 
functions  of  reason  and  revelation,  the  two  great  correlate 
factors  of  knowledge.  As  the  science  of  the  absolute,  so 
called  by  the  Germans,  it  takes  within  its  scope  both  the  finite 
and  the  infinite,  both  the  knowable  and  the  unknowable,  for 
the  respective  provinces  of  reason  and  revelation.  As  that 
summary  universal  science  of  which  Bacon  speaks,  to  which 
all  the  rest  are  tributary,  it  receives  and  cherishes  impartially 
and  equally  the  discovered  and  the  revealed  bodies  of  know- 
ledge, that  it  may  organize  them  into  a  rational  system.  And 
finally,  in  the  most  common  and  literal  sense  of  the  word,  as 
the  love  of  wisdom.  Philosophy,  while  including  and  fostering  ■ 
the  scientific  and  religious  qualities  of  curiosity  and  reverence, 
over  and  above  these  retains  others  more  peculiar  to  herself, 
such  as  that  power  of  abstraction,  that  insight  into  reality, 
that  catholicity  of  view,  that  unquenchable  craving  for  unity 
of  truth  and  symmetry  of  knowledge,  which  arc  not  so  likely 


462  The  Umpirage  of  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

to  be  practiced  by  the  mere  scientist,  or  mere  religionist,  so 
long  as  he  is  immersed  in  his  own  special  researches,  and 
which  yet  easily  come  to  them  both,  the  moment  they  step 
into  her  wider  sphere. 

It  is  to  be  regretted  that  a  prejudice  should  exist  in  some 
minds  against  a  word  of  such  noble  significance,  and  all  the 
more  as  it  is  only  in  rare  cases  that  its  true  meaning  would 
be  repudiated.  Though  a  few  scientists  and  religionists  may 
now  and  then  have  denounced  philosophy  as  sj^eculative 
or  rationalistic,  yet  the  great  mass  would  simply  resent  the 
imputation  of  being  unphilosophical,  as  an  insult  to  their 
understandings.  There  is  plainly  a  good  and  valuable  sense 
of  the  term  which  both  parties  spontaneously  unite  in  using, 
and  which  ought  not  to  be  sacrificed  in  any  mere  logomachy, 
so  long  as  we  have  no  better  word  to  express  it.  If  we 
would  characterize  a  lover,  seeker  and  reconciler  of  all  truths, 
both  natural  and  revealed,  we  must  term  him  a  philosopher. 
If  we  would  describe  that  special  work  which  is  to  be  done 
in  adjusting  the  relations  of  religion  and  science,  in  ascertain- 
ing and  defending  their  respective  spheres  and  prerogatives, 
in  devising  and  applying  logical  rules  to  their  pending  con- 
troversies, in  sifting  their  several  portions  of  truth  from 
error,  and  combining  them  into  a  harmonious  system — we 
can  only  speak  of  all  this  as  a  peculiar  intellectual  task 
belonging  neither  to  religion  alone,  nor  to  science  alone,  but 
to  their  common  ally  and  friend,  philosophy. 

Religion  alone  could  not  furnish  the  needed  umpire. 
Concede  to  the  utmost  her  high  prerogatives :  grant  that  she 
stands  upon  the  authority  of  a  divine  revelation  and  that  for 
its  interpretation  she  has  an  equally  divine  illumination  in  the 
whole  Church  and  in  each  believer  ;  yet  that  revelation,  by  its 
own  self-prescribed  limits,  is  found  to  exclude  her  from  the 
legitimate  fields  of  science,  and  that  illumination  renders 
neither  her  public  nor  private  judgment  infallible  in  scientific 
researches.  Has  she  revealed  to  us  the  laws  of  matter,  motion, 
force,  heat,  light,  electricity,  or  life  ?  Will  she  make  sages 
of  her  saints  and  inspire  her  priests  with  science?  Can  she, 
by  any  mere  sacred  penetration,  outstrip  the  slow  process  of 
induction  and  unfold  the  endless  secrets  of  nature?     As  soon 


CHAP.  I.]  Present  State  of  the  Scieiices.  463 

as  she  flies  against  facts,  in  her  maintenance  of  doctrines, 
does  she  not  suffer  for  the  trespass?  And  has  not  her  whole 
history  shown  that,  when  exclusively  pursued,  her  very  virtues 
through  excess  have  bred  moral  habits  unfavorable  to  phy- 
sical investigations?  that  her  reverence  has  degenerated 
into  superstition,  her  faith  wandered  into  mysticism,  and  her 
zeal  flamed  into  intolerance,  until  she  has  been  ready  to  spurn 
away  all  science  as  alien  or  heathen?  And  while  in  such 
mood  will  she  even  deign  to  appear  at  the  bar  of  reason?  It 
is  but  too  obvious  that,  as  to  any  scientific  questions  or  any 
religious  questions  involving  scientific  facts,  the  mere  re- 
ligionist would  be  no  fit  arbiter. 

Science  alone  could  not  furnish  the  needed  umpire.  Con- 
cede all  that  she  can  justly  claim;  grant  that  she  proceeds 
upon  a  basis  of  facts  and  that  her  process  is  unerring  in  attain- 
ing actual  knowledge;  yet  that  knowledge,  bounded  as  it  is 
by  the  limits  of  reason,  until  supplemented  by  revelation,  can 
never  extend  to  the  transcendental  realms  of  religion.  What 
can  she  tell  of  the  nature,  character  and  policy  of  the  Creator, 
of  the  origin  and  object  of  the  creation,  of  the  duty  and  des- 
tiny of  the  creature?  By  what  rash  generalizations  from  facts 
to  principles,  "like  Pelion  upon  Ossa  piled,"  can  she  climb  into 
that  empyrean  of  divinity?  The  moment  she  trenches  upon 
revealed  doctrines,  does  she  not  betray  her  weakness  and 
bewilderment?  And  has  not  her  whole  history  shown  that, 
when  exclusively  pursued,  she  has  only  engendered  mental 
habits  which  are  unfavorable  to  spiritual  inquiries  ?  that  her 
reliance  upon  the  senses  has  tended  to  materialism,  her  cau- 
tion run  into  scepticism,'  and  her  pride  of  knowledge  begotten 
irreverence,  until  she  has  scoffed  at  all  religion  as  mere  super- 
stition or  delusion  ?  And  while  in  such  temper,  will  she  even 
be  admitted  within  the  purlieu  of  revelation?  It  is  manifest 
that,  as  to  any  religious  questions  or  any  scientific  questions 
involving  religious  truths,  the  mere  scientist  would  be  no  fit 
arbiter. 

Philosophy,  at   lea.st,  is  the  actual,  the   accepted    umpire.  . 
The  two  parties  have  ever  in  fact,  even  though  without  con- 
cert, practically  owned  her  jurisdiction,  and  sought  to  justify 
themselves  to  each  other  in  her  view.     It  has  been  their  aim 


464  The  Umpirage  of  Philosopliy.  [part  ii. 

to  show  that  in  being  scientific  or  religious  they  mean  to  be 
also  philosophical,  to  sacrifice  no  essential  portion  of  the 
whole  truth,  and  do  no  outrage  to  that  common  reason  with- 
out which  we  can  judge  neither  of  the  evidence  of  religion, 
nor  of  the  claims  of  science.  Instinctively  they  have  appealed 
to  her,  in  every  great  crisis  of  free  thought,  to  guard  and  vindi- 
cate at  once  the  authority  of  revelation  and  the  rights  of  rea- 
son. And  this  unconscious  tribute  has  been  more  than  re- 
paid. To  her,  from  the  days  of  Justin,  the  first  apologist, 
religion  largely  owes  its  evidences,  its  defences,  its  appliances; 
to  her,  since  the  time  of  Aristotle,  the  first  great  logician, 
science  is  mainly  indebted  for  its  methods,  its  rights,  its 
triumphs ;  and  at  this  moment,  in  spite  of  their  conflicting 
partisans,  under  her  mild  umpirage,  whatsoever  the  one  can 
establish  as  truly  revealed,  and  the  other  as  actually  dis- 
covered, will  be  spontaneously  accepted  by  them  both. 

Philosophy,  too,  is  the  only  available  umpire.  If  we  wished 
it  otherwise  we  would  wish  in  vain.  The  moment  the  two 
parties  come  into  collision,  it  is  found  that  neither  can  impose 
its  own  terms  upon  the  other.  Paramount  as  religion  must 
be  in  her  own  sphere  with  her  inspired  Bible  and  her 
illumined  Church,  yet  scientific  men  will  not  accept  from 
mere  religionists  a  judgment  upon  their  theories;  and  par- 
amount as  science  must  be  in  her  own  sphere,  with  her 
unerring  methods  and  unquestionable  facts,  yet  religious  men 
will  not  accept  from  mere  scientists  a  judgment  upon  their 
doctrines.  Neither  party  will  be  acknowledged  as  a  com- 
petent and  disinterested  judge  of  the  questions  in  dispute. 
Neither  can  afford  from  its  own  one-sided  position  a  calm  and 
full  survey  of  the  whole  field  of  controversy.  The  rival 
claimants  must  leave  their  different  spheres,  though  without 
sacrificing  them,  and,  for  the  time  at  least,  appear  in  some 
middle  outside  province  which  shall  be  equally  removed  from 
their  respective  prejudices  and  temptations,  where  the  whole 
truth  shall  be  sought  and  prized  as  truth  alone;  and  for  such  a 
province  we  have  no  better  name  than  philosophy.  If  at  that 
only  possible  tribunal,  either  could  prevail  against  the  other, 
so  far  as  we  can  see  (without  some  miraculous  interposition 
for  which  we  have  no  right  to  look),  religion  would  degener- 


CHAP.  I.]  Present  State  of  the  Sciences.  465 

ate  into  superstition  and  science  into  imbecility ;  but  being 
there  legitimated  and  reconciled,  they  will  join  hands  as  twin 
daughters  of  God  and  lovers  of  man. 

Philosophy,  moreover,  is  the  one  desirable  umpire.  It  is 
best  that  the  two  parties  should  agree  to  treat  the  mixed 
problems  rising  between  them  as  properly  philosophical, 
rather  than  merely  scientific  or  purely  religious.  Their 
attempts  to  settle  them  apart,  each  by  its  own  method,  have 
brought  upon  us  overwhelming  evils.  If  the  time  once  was 
when  the  religious  class  was  unfolding  a  whole  cyclopedia  of 
science  out  of  the  Scriptures,  from  Genesis  to  the  Apocalypse, 
as  pure  dogma  and  mystery  of  faith,  yet  the  time  has  nov/ 
come  when  a  few,  at  least,  in  the  scientific  class  are  exhibiting 
a  new  genesis  and  apocalypse  of  religion  as  the  sheer  product 
of  science  and  speculation.  And  it  is  high  time — we  may 
venture  to  say  in  the  name  of  the  great  body  of  sober  and  fair 
minds  on  both  sides,  who  refuse  to  commit  themselves  to 
such  wild  extremes — that  the  two  antagonists,  on  thus  emerg- 
ing from  their  respective  provinces  into  the  broad  plain  of 
philosophy,  should  learn  to  respect  their  common  rights  and 
interests,  and  not  imagine  that  either  can  claim  the  whole  field 
against  the  other.  It  is  time  the  religionist  should  recog- 
nize that  immense  mass  of  facts,  theories,  hypotheses,  which 
is  the  fruit  of  two  thousand  years  of  research,  which  stands 
upon  foundations  of  proof  that  cannot  be  shaken  and  is 
rising  into  a  superstructure  of  knowledge  too  vast  even  to  be 
conceived.  It  is  time,  too,  that  the  scientist  should  cease  to 
ignore  that  vast  body  of  truths,  doctrines,  dogmas,  backed  by 
evidences  which  have  been  accumulating  for  eighteen  centu- 
ries under  the  most  searching  criticism,  which  have  more 
than  convinced  the  great  master  minds  of  the  past,  and  which 
are  mounting  every  hour  with  cumulative  probability  toward 
moral  certainty  itself  And  when  at  length  both  parties  meet 
face  toTace,  as  they  are  now  meeting  before  the  final  problem 
of  the  universe,  it  is  time  for  the  one  to  admit  that  the  pro- 
cesses of  creation  have  not  been  revealed,  and  cannot,  by  the 
most  exact  criticism,  the  most  profound  exegesis,  the  most 
systematic  divinity,  ever  be  discerned  in  the  mere  letter  of 
Holy  Scripture;  and  for  the  other  to  perceive  that  the  theory 
3-1 


466  TJie  Umpirage  of  Philosophy.  [part  il 

of  a  Creator,  anthropomorphic  as  it  may  appear,  still  keeps 
the  field,  still  satisfies  an  immense  number  of  scientific  minds, 
and  is  not  likely  to  be  abandoned  even  by  the  most  advanced 
scientists,  'until  something  else  or  something  better  has  been 
offered  in  its  place.  Only  when  they  have  thus  taken  philo- 
sophical views  of  the  whole  range  of  knowledge  will  they 
cease  their  raids  upon  each  other's  territor}^,  and  no  longer 
maintain  hostile  barriers  or  hollow  truces  within  the  domain 
of  truth.  In  the  realm  of  philosophy  alone  can  they 
meet  and  find  their  needed  mutual  support,  completion  and 
harmony. 

Philosophy  is,  in  fact,  herself  impelled  by  her  own  high  in- 
stinct to  seek  their  reconciliation.  It  is  that  last  crowning 
problem  which  remains  for  her  to  solve.  A  scientist,  as  we 
have  seen,  may  hold  his  scientific  hypotheses  in  antagonism 
or  indifference  to  religious  truth  and  still  be  a  good  scientist, 
or  a  religionist  may  hold  his  religious  dogmas  in  opposition 
or  indifference  to  scientific  facts  and  still  be  a  sound  divine; 
but  the  moment  either  would  intelligently  combine  religious 
truths  with  scientific  facts,  he  becomes  something  more  and 
higher  than  any  mere  specialist,  content  with  his  own  frag- 
mentary knowledge  and  opinions;  something  more  than  any 
mere  scholar,  who  amasses  crude  learning;  something  more 
even  than  a  logician,  who  reasons  conclusively;  he  is  also 
and  pre-eminently  a  seeker  of  truth,  a  lover  of  wisdom,  a 
philosopher;  and  in  so  far  as  he  can  truly  claim  that  title  he 
will  not  rest  satisfied  until  he  has  found  all  truth  and  wisdom, 
embraced  both  religion  and  science  within  his  view,  and  ren- 
dered them  consistent  and  harmonious. 

The  reconciliation  of  Science  and  Religion  is  not  only  a 
distinctive  problem  of  Philosophy,  but  precisely  that  one 
chief  problem  by  the  solution  of  which  her  own  function  is 
exhausted,  her  goal  attained,  her  mission  accomplished.  In 
establishing  the  validity  of  human  reason,  in  maintaining  the 
authority  of  divine  revelation,  in  logically  combining  them 
as  coordinate  means  of  knowledge  and  pouring  their  blended 
light  upon  all  classes  of  facts,  she  is  but  fulfilling  that  sublime 
ideal  towards  which  her  followers  from  age  to  age  have  been 
struggling  with  unquenchable  hope  and  courage.     The  one 


CHAP.  I.]  Present  State  of  the  Seienees.  467 

last  perfect  Philosophy  is  to  be  sought  and  can  only  be  found 
in  the  demonstrated  harmony  of  Science  and  Religion. 

It  should  be  carefully  observed,  at  this  point,  that  no  dis- 
paragement of  any  one  of  the  three  interests,  certainly  no 
exaltation  of  science  over  religion,  or  of  philosophy  over 
either,  is  implied  in  this  definition  of  their  related  provinces. 
An  umpire  is  but  the  servant  of  the  game  that  he  watches, 
making  neither  the  laws  nor  the  facts,  but  simply  applying  the 
one  to  the  other.  And  that  only  true  philosophy  which  seeks 
to  embrace  both  science  and  religion  in  their  normal  relations 
must  itself  be  predetermined  and  limited  by  them.  Any 
attempt  of  the  philosophic  spirit  to  intrude  into  their  domains 
with  the  view  of  distorting  scientific  facts  or  religious  truths 
for  mere  speculative  purposes,  can  only  issue  in  confusion  and 
evil.  The  so-called  philosophies  of  Nature,  such  as  those  of 
Schelling  and  Oken,  which  aim  to  construct  hypothetically 
the  material  universe  without  full  empirical  research,  as  well 
as  the  miscalled  philosophies  of  religion,  such  as  those  of 
Hegel  and  Comte,  which  seek  to  prejudge  the  powers  and 
relations  of  the  Absolute  Intelligence  without  regard  to  its 
actual  expressions,  are  alike  vain  attempts  of  the  mere  reason 
to  dispense  with  experience  and  revelation.  And  the  would- 
be  philosophers  who  aspire  to  conciliate  the  scientific  and  the 
religious  spirit  without  any  practical  acquaintance  with  either, 
are  only  sure  to  fall  under  the  contempt  of  both. 

As  little  would  it  follow  from  the  proposed  definition,  that 
the  philosophical  spirit  must  needs  be  organized  in  some 
visible  tribunal,  issuing  authoritative  decisions.  The  scientific 
spirit  does  not  thus  reach  its  results  through  any  of  the  mere 
institutions  or  associations  which  embody  and  express  it ;  and 
the  religious  spirit,  though  incorporated  in  churches  and 
councils  and  claiming  the  authority  of  an  infallible  Scripture, 
does  not  command  universal  agreement.  It  is  the  crowning 
misfortune  of  the  present  crisis,  that  neither  the  disciples  of . 
religion  nor  the  votaries  of  science  are  united  in  their  respec- 
tive interpretations  of  the  Bible  and  of  Nature,  but  appear 
divided  among  themselves,  as  well  as  opposed  to  each  other, 
by  endless  hypotheses  and  dogmas,  throughout  the  entire 
field  of  research.    And  yet,  as  there  must  still  be  such  a  thing 


468  The  Umpirage  of  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

as  true  science  and  true  religion  amid  all  the  schools  and  the 
sects,  so  there  may  be  a  true  philosophy  ever  discriminating 
and  mediating  between  them  and  a  hidden  fraternity  of  philo- 
sophers more  or  less  consciously  striving  to  bring  them  into 
harmony. 

It  seems  scarcely  necessary  to  add  that  there  can  be  no  in- 
vidious distinction  of  classes  in  the  pure  democracy  of  intel- 
lect. The  philosophic  class  is  but  recruited  from  the  scientific 
and  religious  ranks,  and  can  neither  exist  nor  flourish  without 
them.  Any  one  joins  it  who  pleases,  stays  in  it  as  long  as  he 
chooses,  and  falls  or  rises  by  his  own  merit.  None  need  to 
enter  it  who  feel,  as  at  times  we  all  feel,  that  life  is  full  enough 
of  problems  without  adding  to  their  number.  Some  may  pre- 
fer to  seclude  themselves  within  their  own  provinces,  to  which 
they  are  wedded  with  the  zeal  of  a  votary.  Others  may  make 
chance  excursions  beyond  them,  only  to  retire  as  quickly  to 
less  debatable  ground.  Still  others  may  even  accept  conscious 
contradiction  rather  than  open  conflict,  resolutely  holding  the 
sternest  creed  with  the  strictest  science,  like  the  great  Faraday, 
of  whose  laboratory  and  oratory  it  has  been  said,  that  he 
never  entered  either  without  shutting  the  door  of  the  other. 
But  the  days  for  such  a  .state  of  parties  seem  to  be  passing 
away.  The  trumpet  of  a  new  campaign  has  been  sounded. 
Combatants  have  been  marshaled,  and  the  lines  are  forming. 
When  scientific  and  religious  bodies  have  already  begun  to 
discuss  the  same  problems  from  their  opposite  points  of  view, 
there  can  only  be  warfare  or  agreement.  And  in  such  a  crisis, 
it  is  easy  to  see  that  the  honors  are  more  likely  to  go  to  those 
who  are  championing  the  extreme  wings  of  philosophy  than 
to  any, that  may  be  so  brave  or  so  rash  as  to  risk  the  cross- 
fire between  them. 

In  concluding  this  argument,  it  may  be  well  to  notice  some 
of  the  objections  which  might  be  brought  against  it,  and 
which  have  actually  been  suggested  in  various  quarters,  since 
it  was  first  presented  in  a  memoir  read  before  the  Philosophi- 
cal Society  of  Washington. 

There  is  a  practical,  thougli  not  very  pertinent  objection 
derived  from  the  relative  importance  of  the  truths  of  religion 


CHAP.  I.]  ♦  Present  State  of  the  Sciences.  469 

and  of  science.  It  has  been  well  said  by  Butler,  in  reply  to 
such  invidious  distinctions,  that  we  are  not  competent  judges 
of  what  knowledge  is  best  for  us,  and  that  in  fact  scientific 
knowledge  is  of  the  greatest  consequence  to  man;  and  it  was 
one  of  the  latest  sayings  of  Agassiz,  that  all  science  is  sacred 
and  nature  itself  a  sort  of  holy  scripture.  But  if  it  be  granted 
that  religious  doctrines,  as  commonly  understood,  are  infi- 
nitely more  momentous  than  existing  scientific  verities,  when 
viewed  in  a  practical  light,  yet  this  is  not  precisely  the  aspect 
under  which  they  appear  to  the  philosopher.  It  is  but  a 
truism  to  say  that  all  truths  are  equally  true,  whether  scientific 
or  religious,  and  to  raise  the  question  of  their  comparative 
value  is  irrelevant  and  unseasonable,  when  the  chief  business 
is  the  search  for  truth  itself  as  truth  and  for  its  own  sake, 
though,  if  once  in  the  grasp,  it  will  indeed  prove  no  worth- 
less guerdon,  but  the  sovereign  good  of  human  nature. 

There  is  also  a  covert  fallacy  upon  which  many  proceed  in 
denying  the  fact  or  need  of  any  such  umpirage,  any  such 
conciliatory  office  between  existing  science  and  religion,  as 
has  been  described  under  the  name  of  philosophy.  Appa- 
rently, they  would  leave  their  respective  partizans  to  fight 
their  way  into  defeat  or  victory,  like  two  belligerent  powers 
between  whom  neither  peace  nor  truce  is  possible.  To 
borrow  an  inadequate  illustration  from  the  political  sphere,  it 
is  as  if  it  should  be  thought  better  for  England  and  the  United 
States  to  have  rushed  into  an  unnatural  war  than  to  have 
submitted  their  relative  claims  to  an  international  tribunal;  or 
wiser  for  two  great  parties  to  have  become  embroiled  in  ter- 
rible anarchy  than  to  have  consented  to  the  recent  Electoral 
Commission.  Even  if  the  reconciliation  of  religion  and 
science  be  viewed  as  a  question  of  degrees,  that  philosophy 
which  would  adjust  them  partially  and  problematically  would 
be  nobler  and  safer  than  a  mere  aimless  strife  and  confusion 
between  them,  and  all  such  scruples  must  vanish,  xi  it  be 
shown  that  the  true,  ultimate  philosophy,  as  the  great  debate 
proceeds,  will  involve  a  growing  vindication  of  truth  against 
error  by  means  of  divine  revelation  as  well  as  human  reason. 

Of  more  strictly  logical  objections  deserving  attention,  the 
first  is  that  the  philosopher  is  supposed  to  approach  the  sub- 


470  The  Umpirage  of  Pliilosophy.  ,  [part  ii. 

ject  with  foregone  conclusions  in  respect  to  some  of  the  most 
important  questions  involved  in  the  debate.  This  may  be  so. 
Why  should  it  be  otherwise?  Before  the  debate  can  proceed 
intelligently,  there  are  certain  preliminary  questions  which 
must  and  ought  to  be  settled,  and  which  can  only  be  settled, 
as  we  have  maintained,  by  philosophical  minds.  If,  for  ex- 
ample, the  evidences  of  the  Christian  revelation  should  be 
found  insufficient,  it  would  be  unphilosophical  for  a  theo- 
logian to  appeal  to  that  revelation  as  a  source  of  knowledge 
in  debating  wdth  a  scientist;  but  if  they  are  found  sufficient, 
it  would  be  unphilosophical  for  a  scientist  to  reject  or  ignore 
that  revelation  in  debating  with  a  theologian.  And  until  this 
primary  question  has  been  decided,  any  further  debate  in 
respect  to  other  questions  would  not  only  be  unphilosophical 
in  both  parties,  but  also  useless.  The  whole  field  of  natural 
theology  and  the  Christian  evidences  logically  precedes  all 
questions  between  the  Bible  and  Science.  Surely  something 
ought  to  be  considered  settled  as  the  great  debate  proceeds, 
or  we  shall  only  be  ever  returning  upon  our  tracks  to  the 
point  from  which  we  started.  Moreover,  it  should  not  be 
forgotten  that  the  only  parties  that  can  be  supposed  to  need 
or  accept  reconciliation  are  the  scientist  and  the  religionist, 
not  the  atheist  and  the  theologian,  not  the  infidel  and  the 
Christian,  who  could  never  agree  and  preserve  their  dis- 
tinctive characters.  Scientists,  as  such,  are  not  atheists  and 
infidels.  On  the  contrary,  the  simple  fact,  is  that  as  a  class 
they  have  never  repudiated  the  authority  of  a  divine  revela- 
tion, but  only  some  human  dogmatic  interpretation  which  has 
been  substituted  for  revelation,  and  often  thrust  forward  into 
their  domain  as  if  it  were  itself  the  infallible  word  of  God. 

A  second  objection  is,  that  it  is  assumed  that  specialists 
are  not  capable  of  drawing  inferences  from  the  facts  of  their 
respective  departments.  History  too  plainly  shows  that  this 
assumption  is  safe  and  wise  in  reference  to  the  theological,  as 
well  as  the  scientific  specialist.  Luther,  Calvin,  and  Turrettin 
inferred  from  the  facts  of  their  department  that  the  sun 
revolves  around  the  earth,  and  bitterly  denounced  the  Coper- 
nican  theory  as  a  heresy.  And  no  wonder.  It  seemed  to 
them  to  impugn  the  very  veracity  of  Scripture,  to  tear  the 


CHAP.  I.]  Present  State  of  the  Seienees.  471 

earth  reeling  from  its  center,  and  revolutionize  with  it  the 
whole  existing  doctrine  of  heaven  and  hell.  It  would  pro- 
bably have  been  harder  for  us  to  accept  that  hypothesis  then, 
than  it  would  be  for  us  to  accept  the  development  hypo- 
thesis now.  They  simply  drew  their  own  special  inferences 
from  Scriptural  facts,  as  too  many  are  still  doing,  and  the 
result  was  a  humiliating  defeat  from  which  we  have  not  yet 
fully  recovered.  And  this  is  but  one  among  other  instances 
showing  that  the  most  devout  and  orthodox  divines  in  dealing 
with  religio-scientific  questions  are  not  only  liable  to  err,  but 
likely  to  err,  if  they  refuse  to  allow  philosophers  to  compare 
their  dogmatic  views  of  Scripture  with  the  ascertained  facts  of 
nature,  or  what  amounts  to  the  same  thing,  if  they  decline 
themselves  to  take  such  a  philosophical  position. 

A  third  objection  is,  that  the  special  work  assigned  to  the 
philosopher  may  be  done  by  either  the  scientist  or  the  theo- 
logian. In  a  guarded  sense,  and  to  a  limited  extent,  this  is 
true.  Although  the  reconciliation  of  science  and  religion 
cannot  be  accomplished  by  any  one  mind,  or  single  genera- 
tion, yet  every  true  philosopher  contributes  something  to  the 
process,  even  though,  in  other  spheres  and  relations,  he  were 
also  a  scientist  or  a  theologian.  But  it  is  only  when  acting 
as  a  philosopher  that  he  can  properly  be  said  to  join  in  that 
work.  The  moment  he  should  appear  in  the  high  debate 
avowing  any  other  character  and  purpose,  as  a  mere  scientist 
or  as  a  mere  theologian,  he  would  be  universally  challenged 
for  an  incompetent  witness,  or  a  professional  advocate.  It  is 
true  that  the  most  interested  witness,  or  the  most  vehement 
advocate  in  one  case  might  become  a  competent  judge  in 
another  case,  and  there  find  himself  obliged  by  the  facts  and 
the  laws  to  decide  against  his  own  cherished  impressions  or 
prejudices.  And  so  an  exact  physicist  or  a  zealous  apologist 
might  exchange  his  special  aim  for  the  more  general  task  of 
a  philosophic  seeker  after  absolute  truth  in  regions  of  thought 
and  research,  where  both  nature  and  Scripture  would  compel 
him  very  seriously  to  modify  his  favorite  hypotheses  or  dog- 
mas. It  is  also  true  that  the  mass  of  divines  and  savants  are 
likely  to  remain  mere  specialists,  wedded  to  their  chosen  pur- 
suits; and  yet,  in  every  science,  there  will  always  be  some 


4/2  The  Umpirage  of  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

whom  the  philosophic  passion  impels  to  take  a  more  encyclo- 
paediac  range,  with  the  dauntless  hope  of  reducing  the  mass  of 
truth  and  knowledge  to  unity  and  harmony.  If  this  is  all 
that  is  meant  by  saying  that  "the  special  work  assigned  to  the 
philosopher  may  be  done  by  either  the  scientist  or  the  theo- 
logian," it  is  only  a  variation  of  our  own  statement,  that  "the 
philosophic  class  is  but  recruited  from  the  scientific  and  re- 
ligious ranks,  and  can  neither  exist  nor  flourish  without  them." 
A  fourth  and  last  objection  is  found  in  the  fact  that  no 
satisfactory  results  would  be  reached  in  practice,  if  by  the 
umpirage  of  philosophy  is  meant  the  arbitration  of  fallible  men 
of  like  passions  with  our  own.  But  there  is  a  manifest 
difference  between  any  contemporary  philosopher  and  that 
great  historic  personage  who  has  been  universally  accepted 
as  an  authority  after  more  than  two  centuries  of  trial.  And  it 
should  also  be  observed  that  we  have  distinctly  precluded  all 
reference  to  any  visible  tribunal  issuing  authoritative  deci- 
sions. After  using  the  rhetorical  device  of  Professor  Tyndall 
as  a  mere  illustration,  we  have  described  the  vast  social  process 
of  reconciling  the  two  great  catholic  interests  of  religion  and 
science  as  peculiarly  belonging  to  philosophy,  not  to  any  single 
philosopher  surely,  nor  yet  to  any  one  philosophical  school, 
but  simply  to  that  entire  philosophic  mind  or  spirit  which  per- 
vades all  schools,  and  lives  and  grows  through  all  generations. 
And  already,  the  immense  services  of  such  a  philosophic  spirit, 
to  religion  as  well  as  to  science,  have  become  too  obvious  to 
be  gainsaid.  But  for  that  spirit  the  Church  to-day  might  be 
denouncing  the  rotundity  of  the  earth  as  a  deadly  heresy, 
stigmatizing  our  antipodes  as  heathen  myths  or  outcasts  from 
grace,  and  consigning  to  the  flames  of  the  hell  beneath,  all 
who  doubted  the  motion  of  the  heavens  above.  By  means  of 
that  spirit  have  been  steadily  reared  those  bulwarks  of  evi- 
dence, wall  within  wall  and  battlement  above  battlement, 
which  now  surround  the  citadel  of  the  essential  faith.  It  is 
that  spirit,  too,  which  has  prescribed  for  science  its  methods 
and  laws,  has  kept  it  within  its  just  bounds,  and  is  still  at  work 
upon  its  unsolved  problems,  with  a  patient  faith  that  refuses  to 
commit  itself  to  any  partisan  extremes  of  the  hour.  And  as 
the  great  debate  goes  on,  it  is  that  spirit  which  ever  hopes  for 


CHAP.  I.]  Present  State  of  the  Sciences.  473 

yet  higher  sacred  triumphs  in  the  future  than  any  that  have 
been  won  in  the  past. 

Let  the  nature  of  this  great  umpirage,  with  the  case  to  be 
submitted,  be  now  briefly  summarized.  Under  the  head  of 
competency  for  the  umpireship  must  be  included  the  scientific 
virtues  of  curiosity,  accuracy,  and  candor,  the  rehgious  graces 
of  reverence,  humihty,  and  faith,  and  over  and  above  these  the 
more  philosophical  qualities  of  abstraction  and  generalization, 
insight  into  reality,  catholicity  of  view,  and  unquenchable 
craving  for  unity  of  truth,  and  for  symmetry  of  knowledge. 
Among  the  terms  of  the  umpirage  must  be  premised  and  vin- 
dicated the  validity  of  reason,  the  evidence  of  revelation,  their  ■ 
correlation  in  each  science  and  in  the  scale  of  the  sciences, 
and  the  logical  rules  applicable  to  their  normal,  existing  and 
prospective  relations.  As  issues  for  the  umpirage  are  pre- 
sented the  opposite  hypotheses  and  dogmas  held  concerning 
the  origin,  development,  and  destiny  of  the  heavens,  of  the 
earth  and  of  man,  of  the  individual  and  of  society,  of  art, 
science,  politics,  and  religion,  together  with  the  great  meta- 
physical controversies  and  philosophical  disputes  which  have 
divided  the  sects  and  the  schools  in  all  ages  and  countries. 

A  glimpse  is  enough  to  show  us  the  vastness  of  the  theme. 
Not  by  any  one  mind,  not  by  any  one  people,  not  by  any  one 
age  can  it  be  mastered.  It  is  the  mighty  argument  of  succes- 
sive generations,  proceeding  with  stately  steps  from  its  pre- 
mises in  a  remote  past  toward  its  conclusions  in  a  distant 
future.  If  we  will  surrender  ourselves  to  it,  we  can  see  whither 
it  IS  carrying  us,  and  exult  in  the  prospect. 

In  the  view  of  religion;  eveiything  may  appear  miraculous; 
in  the  view  of  science  everything  may  appear  natural ;  while 
in  the  view  of  philosophy  both  will  only  appear  more  and 
more  consistent  aspects  of  one  and  the  same  reality.  Let 
science,  if  it  can,  resolve  the  whole  course  of  nature  into  one 
continuous  process  of  correlate  forces;  let  religion,  if  it  must, 
exhibit  that  course  of  nature  as  one  dazzling  series  of  miracles; 
a  true  philosophy  will  yet  behold  them  blending  together  as 
but  the  sure  logic  and  even  pulse  of  one  Almighty  Mind,  ever 
reasoning  through  the  whole  creation,  and  flushing  with  life 
all  creatures. 
3-K 


474  ^^^  Umpirage  of  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

As  yet,  indeed,  to  us  who  can  see  but  a  speck,  a  span,  of 
the  two  vast  coinciding  spheres,  they  must  seem  confused, 
dark  and  often  contradictory.  But  "  there  may  be  beings  in 
the  universe,  whose  capacities  and  knowledge  and  views '  may 
be  so  extensive  as  that  the  whole  Christian  dispensation  may 
to  them  appear  natural ;  as  natural  as  the  visible  known  course 
of  things  appears  to  us."  Be  that  as  it  may,  if  we  will  read 
the  future  as  we  can  the  past,  it  will  not  seem  incredible  that 
the  most  extreme  investigators  are  now  but  groping  through 
the  darkness  toward  some  central  point  where,  at  length,  they 
shall  meet  as  in  a  focus  of  light.  Only,  we  may  be  sure,  they 
will  meet  there,  not  like  those  two  rash  knights  at  their  first 
encounter,  not  like  those  eager  champions  who  are  now  filling 
the  air  with  challenges  and  criminations,  but  rather  like 
exhausted  and  bleeding  warriors,  after  having  fought  their  way 
into  a  recognition  of  each  others'  truth  and  virtue,  to  clasp 
hands  as  friends  who  had  but  mistaken  themselves  for  foes. 


CHAPTER    II. 


THE  POSITIVE  PHILOSOPHY  OR  THEORY  OF 
NESCIENCE. 


The  position  taken  in  the  last  chapter  is,  that  the  numerous 
unsolved  problems  now  in  debate  between  scientists  and  re- 
ligionists are  neither  purely  scientific,  nor  merely  religious, 
but  properly  philosophical  questions,  to  be  discussed  in  a 
philosophical  spirit,  to  be  kept  within  the  province  of  philo- 
sophical minds,  and  to  be  wrought  as  fast  as  they  are  settled 
into  the  ultimate  philosophical  system.  We  cannot  decide 
them  as  mere  theologians,  appealing  to  Scripture  alone ;  we 
cannot  decide  them  as  mere  scientists,  appealing  to  Nature 
alone ;  we  can  only  decide  them  as  philosophers,  lovers  of  all 
knowledge  and  truth,  embracing  both  Nature  and  Scripture 
in  our  view,  sifting  the  evidence  brought  by  their  respective 
disciples,  and  then  basing  our  conclusions  upon  that  evidence, 
even  though  it  should  be  against  our  previous  opinions  and 
wishes.  This  was  also  expressed  in  a  more  figurative  manner 
by  personifying  the  opposing  interests  of  Science  and  Religion 
and  representing  Philosophy  as  the  umpire  between  them  ; 
not  any  individual  philosopher  between  any  individual  scientist 
and  religionist ;  nor  yet  any  particular  system  of  philosophy 
to  which  both  might  appeal  as  a  standard ;  but  simply  that 
philosophic  mind,  genius,  or  spirit  which  in  the  whole  race  of 
true  philosophers  has  ever  sought,  and  still  seeks,  with  more 
or  less  thoroughness  and  success,  to  mediate  between  con- 
flicting sects  and  schools,  to  distinguish  their  truths  from 
their  errors,  and  to  derive  from  them  the  final  system  of  per- 
fect knowledge. 

475 


4/6  The  Positive  Pliilosophy.  [part  ii. 

Now,  it  will  be  found  that  there  are  two  extreme  philo- 
sophical tendencies  at  the  present  day,  susceptible  of  concilia- 
tion and  combination,  and  thus  giving  rise  to  three  distinct 
systems  of  science  in  relation  to  religion  :  ist.  The  Positive 
Philosophy  or  theory  of  nescience  as  ignoring  revelation. 
2d.  The  Absolute  Philosophy  or  theory  of  omniscience  as 
superseding  revelation.  3d.  The  Ultimate  Philosophy  or 
theory  of  perfectible  science  as  concurring  with  revelation. 
We  are  to  discuss  the  two  former  with  the  view  of  mamtain- 
ing  the  latter. 

The  Positive  Philosophy,  according  to  its  chief  founder, 
Auguste  Comte,  restricts  science  to  the  laws  of  phenomena 
without  inquiring  into  their  causes,  first  or  final,  and  therefore 
excludes  theology  and  the  metaphysical  sciences,  retains  only 
the  empirical  sciences  of  mathematics,  astronomy,  physics, 
chemistry,  physiology,  social  physics,  and  proposes  a  histori- 
cal law  of  their  evolution  in  a  serial  order,  each  through  three 
stages,  the  first  theological,  the  second  metaphysical,  and  the 
third  positive.  Mr.  J.  Stuart  Mill,  in  his  System  of  Logic, 
adopts  substantially  the  system  of  Comte,  whilst  enlarging  his 
classification  of  the  sciences  so  as  to  embrace  psychology  and 
ethics  in  distmction  from  the  purely  physical  sciences.  Mr. 
Herbert  Spencer,  in  his  New  Philosophy,  supports  the  same 
theory  of  nescience  with  the  logic  of  Hamilton  and  Mansel, 
but  classifies  the  sciences  differently,  and  denies  that  they  have 
observed  a  serial  order  in  their  evolution,  or  that  the  true 
historical  law  of  their  genesis  has  yet  been  found.  Mr.  George 
H.  Lewes,  as  a  disciple  of  Comte,  characterizes  the  Unknow- 
able Absolute  of  Spencer  as  a  monotheistic  development  of 
fetichism,  and  maintains  that  the  true  Absolute  Existence  is 
the  sum  total  of  things,  known  only  in  part  and  by  Feeling ; 
but  at  the  same  time  claims  that  some  of  the  metaphysical 
sciences  admit  of  the  positive  method,  and  proposes  the  term 
mctempirical,  in  place  of  metaphysical,  to  distinguish  the 
unknowable  from  the  knowable  region  of  research.  Dr.  John 
Fiske,  in  his  "  Cosmic  Philosophy,"  as  an  independent  critic 
of  Comte  and  Spencer,  has  not  only  improved  their  systems, 
but  maintained  with  remarkable  vigor  and  acutcncss,  that 
in    place    of  the    three    stages    in  the    evolution  of  science, 


CHAP.  II.]  Theory  of  Nescience.  477 

there  is  but  one  continuous  process  of  "  deanthropomorphi- 
zation"  (or  emancipation  from  human  conceptions),  and  that 
the  infinite  and  absolute  cause  of  the  universe,  though  un- 
knowable, is  yet  manifested  through  the  phenomenal  world ; 
though  impersonal,  is  yet  divine ;  and  thus  affords  a  basis  for 
the  harmony  of  science  and  religion,  which  may  unite  in 
recognizing  it  under  the  names  of  Nature  and  Deity.  While 
such  positivist  philosophers  thus  differ  in  regard  to  some 
details,  it  will  be  seen  that  they  alike  ignore  revealed  theology, 
and  in  fact  exclude  all  the  metaphysical  sciences  from  the 
realm  of  philosophy. 

Let  it,  therefore,  be  premised  that  we  are  not  about  to 
assail  this  system  on  mere  theological  grounds.  Such  an 
argument  might  indeed  be  constructed,  and  one  that  would 
prove  both  valid  and  conclusive.  The  Positive  Philosophy 
is  notoriously  open  to  the  charges  of  atheism  and  infidelity. 
It  not  only  makes  no  provision  for  a  supernatural  religion, 
but  avowedly  regards  Christianity  as  only  a  remnant  of  the 
mythological  era  of  history.  To  the  Church  it  merely  ac- 
cords the  merit  of  having  served  as  a  provisional  institute  in 
the  process  of  its  own  development  toward  some  future  vague 
worship  of  Humanity  or  Nature.  It  would  certainly  be 
easy  to  accumulate  objections  of  a  religious  character  against 
a  system  so  opposed  to  all  the  holier  instincts  of  our  nature, 
and  so  reckless  of  the  entire  evidence  of  divine  revelation. 
There  have  not  been  wanting  dissents  of  the  kind  even  from 
those  who  could  be  suspected  of  no  special  interest  in  the 
theological  profession.  But  the  reasoning,  sound  as  it  is, 
can  have  no  effect  upon" the  disciples  of  Positivism,  or  upon 
any  inclined  to  adopt  its  fundamental  principle.  According 
to  that  principle,  theology  itself,  considered  as  a  science  of 
revealed  truth,  has  been  inductively  demonstrated  to  be  an 
effete  superstition,  no  more  worthy  of  scientific  regard  than 
mythology,  of  which  indeed  it  is  to  be  taken  as  only  the  last 
and  highest  development.  Any  argument,  therefore,  based 
upon  theological  premises,  would  be  due,  in  the  estimation 
of  the  Positive  philosopher,  to  mere  partisan  adherence  to  a 
waning  interest,  and  coolly  accepted  by  him  as  an  uncon- 
scious tribute  to  his  own  intellectual  superiority. 


478  The  Positive  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

For  a  similar  reason,  we  do  not  now  venture  upon  metaphy- 
sical premises,  as  defined  by  this  system.  Metaphysics,  we 
are  assured,  must  share  the  fate  of  theology.  It  is  the  pecu- 
liar boast  ■  of  the  Positive  Philosophy  that  it  subsists'  by  a 
refutation  of  all  other  philosophies  on  strictly  scientific 
grounds.  It  professes  to  have  assailed  and  overthrown  them 
with  the  hard  facts  of  universal  history  and  human  nature, 
and  to  be  already  leaving  them  far  behind  it,  in  the  wake  of 
progress,  as  mere  brilliant  dreams  of  the  childhood  of  science. 
The  great  body  of  metaphysicians  are  thus  to  find  them- 
selves in  the  same  category  with  the  theologians.  It  will  be 
to  no  purpose  that  the  spiritualist  or  the  mystic  should  object 
to  the  materialistic  and  sceptical  tendencies  of  the  system, 
and  demonstrate  its  utter  incompetency  to  solve  any  of  the 
great  ontological  problems  of  nature  and  humanity.  The 
Positivist,  in  becoming  a  Positivist,  has  reasoned  down  all 
such  inquiries  as  vain  and  puerile,  and  scorning  to  tread  in 
any  other  path  than  that  of  solid  facts,  pretends  to  have 
mounted  by  the  sure  steps  of  induction  to  an  eminence  from 
whence  he  can  proudly  contemplate  all  the  objections  of 
reason  and  of  faith,  of  religion  and  of  philosophy,  as  mere 
vagaries  of  decaying  superstition  and  prejudice. 

In  the  present  argument,  therefore,  we  accept  the  only 
alternative  which  the  disciples  of  this  school  seem  disposed  to 
leave  us.  We  descend  from  the  aerial  regions  of  theology 
and  metaphysics,  upon  the  narrow  arena  of  the  Positive  Phi- 
losophy itself,  and  take  the  weapons  it  would  force  into  our 
own  hands.  It  need  not  be  imagined  that  we  are  only  about 
to  exemplify  those  "  theological  and  metaphysical  prejudices," 
which  its  admirers  complacently  dream  it  is  destined  to  sup- 
plant, nor  even  that  the  merit  of  originality  must  belong  to 
any  one  who  attempts  its  refutation.  Our  apprehension  is 
rather,  that  if  Positivism  could  be  made  its  own  judge,  it 
would  pronounce  its  own  sentence.  In  a  word,  wq  believe  it 
possible  to  show  that  it  proceeds  upon  the  abuse  of  a  sound 
method,  and  that  the  little  truth  it  has  gathered  up  into  itself 
will  alone  suffice  to  refute  its  remaining  error. 

But  what  is  the  Positive  Philosophy  ?  In  the  main,  it  is 
that  which   is   familiarly  known  among  us   as  the  inductive 


CHAP.  II.]  Theory  of  Nescience.  479 

philosophy.  Comte  himself  frequently  declares  his  system  to 
be  only  the  extension  and  completion  of  the  Baconian  method. 
His  admirers  are  fond  of  styling  him  "  the  Bacon  of  the  Nine- 
teenth Century;"  and  in  particular  point  with  pride  to  his 
classification  of  the  sciences  as  a  second  Novum  Orgaman. 
We  are  not  insensible  either  to  the  merits  or  to  the  defects  of 
this  portion  of  his  labors.  As  a  simple  construction  of  the 
intellect,  if  not  as  a  direct  contribution  to  the  philosphy  of 
physical  research,  it  has  been  pronounced  by  Morell  "  a 
masterpiece  of  scientific  thinking."  We  cannot  perceive, 
however,  that  what  is  true  and  valuable  in  it  of  necessity 
arises  out  of  the  accompanying  speculations,  or  indeed  that  it 
constitutes  the  distinguishing  feature  of  the  system. 

On  the  contrary,  that  distinguishing  feature  undoubtedly  is, 
its  attempted  application  of  the  inductive  method  to  the 
phenomena  of  human  intelligence,  as  displayed  in  history, 
with  the  view  of  discovering  a  law  by  means  of  which  the 
natural  process  of  science  shall  be  ascertained  and  regulated. 
In  other  words,  it  aspires  to  be  a  philosophy  of  science  based 
upon  the  histoiy  of  science.  It  would  apply  the  accumulated 
experience  of  the  race  to  the  great  problem  of  determining 
what  are  the  true  limits,  the  method,  and  the  goal  of  human 
knowledge.  With  this  design  it  enters  upon  a  survey  of  the 
course  of  man's  speculative  or  intellectual  convictions  through- 
out all  time,  the  result  of  which  is  the  announcement  of  a 
grand  law  of  scientific  development,  which  all  the  most  ad- 
vanced sciences  are  declared  to  have  observed  in  their  progress 
toward  exact,  real  knowledge,  and  which  all  the  remainder 
must  therefore,  sooner  or  later,  illustrate. 

Now,  before  proceeding  any  further,  we  might  here  raise 
an  objection  of  no  little  consequence.  This  proposed  "  law  of 
the  intellectual  evolution  of  humanity,"  Comte  would  con- 
stitute the  summary  law  of  universal  history,  by  means  of 
which  all  its  complex  phenomena  are  to  be  explained.  The 
entire  social  development,  whether  material,  political,  or 
religious,  he  would  make  to  depend  upon  the  development 
of  science.  He  would  thus  not  only  render  science  the  par- 
amount interest,  but  actually  involve  every  other  interest,  art, 
politics,  and  even  religion,  in  the  process  of  its  evolution;  so 


480  TJie  Positive  PJiilosopliy.  [part  ii. 

that,  as  Mr.  Mill  expresses  it,  "  Speculation,  intellectual  activity, 
the  pursuit  of  truth,  is  the  main  determining  cause  of  the 
social  progress."  But  to  this  it  might  be  objected,  not  simply 
that  the  speculative  propensity  is  too  inoperative,  and  re- 
stricted to  too  small  a  portion  of  mankind,  to  admit  of  such  a 
predominance  being  assigned  to  it,  but  that,  with  all  the 
potency  which  can  be  justly  claimed  for  it,  it  is  itself  sub- 
ordinate to  other  social  agencies  utterly  beyond  its  control. 
In  a  word,  we  believe  it  could  be  shown,  and  that  by  strictly 
positive  reasoning,  that  while  the  material  progress  of  society 
does  indeed  depend  upon  its  intellectual  progress,  yet  its  intel- 
lectual depends  upon  its  religious  progress,  and  its  religious 
progress  upon  Providence.  The  effect  of  such  an  argument 
would  be  to  conserve  whatever  of  truth  may  be  found  em- 
bodied in  Comte's  "law  of  the  intellectual  evolution,"  and  yet 
preclude  the  destructive  errors  which  have  resulted  from  his 
exaggerated  estimate  and  perverse  application  of  that  law. 
To  mention  only  a  simple  example,  religion,  and  in  particular, 
revealed  religion,  would  then  be  made  to  appear  as  itself  "the 
main  determining  cause,"  and  not  a  mere  accompanying  effect 
of  civilization.  Without  venturing,  however,  upon  such  in- 
quiries, we  now  return  to  the  consideration  of  the  law  itself 

The  human  mind,  according  to  this  law,  invariably  adopts 
three  successive  modes  of  explaining  phenomena ;  first,  by  re- 
ferring them  to  supernatural  agents ;  then,  to  metaphysical 
entities  ;  and  at  last  to  mere  natural  laws.  These  three  stages 
of  intellectual  development,  in  the  order  named,  logically  and 
practically  ensue  upon  each  other,  both  in  the  race  and  in  the 
individual,  and  are  to  be  termed  respectively,  the  theological, 
the  metaphysical,  and  the  positive  stage.  Let  each  be  briefly 
characterized. 

In  the  theological  stage,  it  is  the  spontaneous  tendency  of 
mankind  to  attribute  all  phenomena  to  the  arbitrary  wills  of 
supernatural  beings.  Such  is  the  necessary  point  of  departure 
for  the  human  intellect;  and  three  phases  mark  its  develop- 
ment. At  first,  external  objects  in  nature  are  conceived  of  by 
the  wondering  savage  as  animated  with  a  life  analogous  to  his 
own,  and  having  a  mysterious  power  over  him  for  good  or 
evil.    This  is  fctichism,  which  is  the  grossest  form  of  the  theo- 


CHAP.  II.]  Theory  of  Nescience.  481 

logical  instinct,  and  is  illustrated  by  such  of  the  human  tribes 
as  are  still  but  slightly  removed  from  animality.     By  degrees, 
however,  through  the  generalizing  and  social  faculties,  these 
individual   and    domestic   fetiches  become  grouped  together 
under  some  more  powerful  fetich  of  the  particular  tribe,  or 
department  of  nature  to  which  they  belong,  and  the  mythical 
creature  is  endowed  with  attributes  in  keeping  with  the  ele- 
ments over  which  he  is  imagined  to  preside,  or  the  interests 
he   is  supposed  to  subserve.     This  is  the  era  of  polytheism, 
when  the  woods  are  peopled  with  drj^ads,  and  the  waters  with 
naiads,  and  the  heavens  with  the  passions  and  graces,  and  all 
nature  is  alive  with  gods  and  goddesses.     But  at  last  the  pro- 
pensity to  transfer  human  personality  into  outward  objects, 
having   mounted  from   one  degree  of  generality  to  another 
with   the    increasing    spirit    of    nationality   and    speculation, 
reaches  its  climax  in  monotheism,  the  doctrine  of  one  supreme 
fetich  or  myth,  by  which  all  others  are  to  be  subordinated 
and  rendered  obsolete.     The  gods  now  disappear  before  the 
idea  of  Jehovah ;  the  strife  of  contending  powers  in  nature  is 
harmonized  in  the  notion  of  one  absolute  Will ;  and  prayer 
aspires  after  the  prize  of  universal  control.     This  is  the  per- 
fection of  the  theological  spirit,  and  it  is  admitted  to  be  an 
immense  advance  upon  the  gross  materialistic  pantheism  in 
which  it  originated.     Yet  with  all  its  unity  and  consistency, 
it  must  be  regarded  as  a  mere  system  of  speculative  opinions, 
by  w^hich  society  is  for  a  time  held  together  in  the  process  of 
unfolding  its  own  intellective  capacity,  and  no  more  destined 
to  permanence  than  either  of  the  preceding  phases  of  the  same 
tendency.     The  god,  in  Avhose  single  will  all  phenomena  have 
thus  been  colligated,  is  a  mere  product  of  human  speculation, 
spontaneously  exercising  and  developing  itself  through  long 
ages,  and  by  a  combination  of  innumerable  minds,  from  its 
first  feeble  glimmerings  in  the  half-animal  savage,  up  to  its 
most  brilliant  surmises  in  the  cultured  sage  or  saint.     And 
now  the  very  agencies  concerned  in  the  elaboration  of  this 
august  Abstraction,  which  men  have  learned  to  adore  and 
love,  must  turn  against  it  and  effect  its  dissolution.     For,  of 
necessity  it  soon  begins  to  be  discovered,  at  first  by  the  specu- 
lative class,  and  then  through  them  by  the  masses,  that  there 
3-L 


482  The  Positive  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

are  vast  bodies  of  phenomena  not  under  the  regulation  of  a 
divine  will,  but  simply  of  natural  laws ;  and  as  this  empire  of 
natural  laws  is  extended  from  one  class  of  facts  to  another, 
that  of  a' divine  will,  both  in  science  and  in  practice,  propor- 
tionably  diminishes.  Thus  a  new  system  of  opinions  is 
destined  to  gradually  take  the  place  of  the  old  as  the  basis  of 
a  new  social  organization.  But,  in  the  mean  time,  there  must 
exist  some  scheme  of  provisional  conceptions  by  means  of 
which  the  transition  shall  be  effected;  and  it  is  this  which 
constitutes  the  intermediate  or  second  great  stage  of  the 
intellectual  evolution. 

In  the  metaphysical  stage,  the  primitive  tendency  to  explain 
phenomena  by  supernatural  agencies,  is  being  steadily  sup- 
planted by  means  of  a  tendency  to  explain  them  by  meta- 
physical abstractions.  Such  a  revolution  is  necessitated  by 
the  advance  of  speculation ;  and  involves  the  two-fold  process 
of  decomposing  the  old  theological  system,  and  preparing  the 
elements  of  the  new  Positive  system.  Considered  in  its  rela- 
tion to  the  preceding  and  succeeding  stage,  it  is,  therefore, 
either  a  destructive  or  constructive  agency.  As  a  destructive 
agency,  the  metaphysical  spirit  exhibits  three  phases.  At 
first,  that  freedom  of  individual  inquiry,  provoked  and  fostered 
by  monotheism  as  distinguished  from  polytheism,  gives  rise 
to  heresy  and  dissension,  and  the  myth  of  a  Supreme  Being 
is  consequently  espoused  by  rival  claimants.  This  is  Protest- 
antism, by  which  theology  is  driven  to  war  with  itself  Then, 
the  critical  spirit  advances  from  heresy  to  infidelity,  and  for  a 
divine  person  is  now  substituted  a  personification  called 
Nature;  for  a  divine  will,  the  notion  of  a  Providence  sub- 
mitting itself  to  rules;  and  for  divine  purposes  in  particular 
objects  or  events,  the  entities  of  causes,  first  and  final.  This 
is  deism,  by  which  theology  is  banished  to  the  pulpit  and  the 
cloister.  At  last,  a  logical  and  systematic  scepticism  sweeps 
away  all  vestiges  of  supernaturalism,  extirpates  even  the 
remaining  abstraction  of  a  great  First  Cause,  reduces  the 
notion  of  force  or  substance  in  phenomena  to  a  mere  scientific 
fiction,  and  leaves  them  wholly  to  the  regulation  of  their 
own  laws  of  co-existence  and  succession.  This  is  atheism, 
by  which  theology  is  consigned  to  history  as  an  extinct  in- 


CHAP.  II.]  Theory  of  Nescience.  483 

terest.  As  a  constructive  agency,  the  metaphysical  spirit, 
while  in  the  act  of  disorganizing  the  old  theological  regime, 
is  providing  for  the  new  Positive  regime,  by  liberating  those 
various  industrial  and  speculative  movements  essential  to 
such  a  reorganization.  Thus  is  at  length  opened  the  way  for 
the  third  and  final  stage  of  the  great  development. 

In  the  Positive  stage,  the  tendency  to  refer  phenomena  to 
supernatural  wills,  having  been  supplanted  by  a  tendency  to 
refer  them  to  metaphysical  causes,  is  now  succeeded  by  a 
tendency  to  refer  them  to  natural  laws.  Such  is  the  inevi- 
table terminus  of  the  whole  evolution,  and  herein  must  be 
sought  its  legitimate  consummation.  As  it  is  necessary  for 
humanity  to  begin  with  a  supernatural  explanation  of  the 
facts  with  which  it  has  to  deal,  and  proceed  by  a  metaphysical 
explanation,  so  must  it  at  last  end  with  a  purely  natural  ex- 
planation, wherein  it  shall  be  concerned  solely  with  the  facts 
themselves,  as  spontaneously  displayed  under  their  laws,  and 
forever  abandon  all  inquiry  into  their  origin  or  causes  as  vain 
and  puerile.  But  since  the  different  kinds  of  facts  vary  in 
simplicity  and  generality,  the  different  kinds  of  knowledge 
corresponding  to  them  must  proceed  at  unequal  rates  through 
the  three  stages,  arriving  at  the  final  stage  in  the  order  of 
their  relative  freedom  from  complexity  and  specialness. 
Accordingly  mathematics,  having  to  deal  with  facts  the  most 
abstract  and  universal,  and  least  exposed  to  theological  or- 
metaphysical  perversion,  was  the  first  of  the  sciences  to  as- 
sume a  character  of  Positivity,  Astronomy,  in  consequence 
of  its  mathematical  simplicity  and  generality,  was  the  next  to 
reach  the  Positive  stage,  having  groped  through  the  two 
preceding  stages  of  astrolatry  and  astrology.  Terrestrial 
physics,  the  simplest  of  the  sciences  after  astronomy,  is 
already  emerging  into  a  Positive  form,  though  still  hampered 
with  some  remnants  of  the  earlier  periods.  Biology,  however, 
being  concerned  with  the  more  complex  phenomena  of 
organization,  is  as  yet  involved  in  metaphysical  confusion, 
particularly  in  its  psychological  department ;  while  sociology 
is  totally  enveloped  in  the  primitive  theological  darkness; 
the  most  advanced  thinkers  still  dreaming  that  the  action  of 
associated  human  beings  is  regulated  by  Providence  or  legis- 


484  The  Positive  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

lation  rather  than  by  natural  laws.  But  the  sciences  scale  the 
summit  of  truth  in  linked  series,  each  being  helped  forward 
by  its  predecessor,  and  bringing  with  it  the  pledge  of  its  suc- 
cessor. The  day  must  therefore  come  when  even  sociology, 
the  last  of  the  train,  shall  be  planted  on  the  same  Positive 
eminence  with  mathematics  and  astronomy,  and  so  enable  us 
to  resolve  political  questions  with  the  same  certainty  as 
problems  in  mechanics,  or  predict  the  career  of  societies,  in 
given  circumstances,  with  the  same  precision  that  we  now 
describe  the  orbits  of  the  heavenly  bodies.  This  will  be  the 
millennium  of  the  Positive  philosopher,  wherein  science  shall 
take  the  reins  of  politics,  shall  teach  art  to  subjugate  nature, 
and  idealize  the  triumph  in  creations  of  more  than  classic 
glory,  and  shall  even  regenerate  religion  itself,  by  rendering 
it  the  intelligent  worship  of  that  Humanity,  whose  wondrous 
knowledge,  power,  and  goodness,  were  once  embodied  in  the 
myth  of  a  Supreme  Being. 

Such  is  an  outline  of  Comte's  law  of  the  intellectual  devel- 
opment of  humanity,  together  with  the  tremendous  conclu- 
sions pendant  upon  it.  No  one  at  all  acquainted  with  it  will 
deny  that  we  have  done  it  all  the  justice  possible  in  so  brief 
a  statement.  But,  before  we  admit  its  scientific  pretensions, 
what  we  have  now  a  right  to  demand  upon  the  grounds  of 
Positivism  itself  is,  that  it  be  sustained  by  the  "  combined 
•evidence  of  human  history  and  human  nature."  These  are 
all  the  conditions  of  such  a  law,  as  prescribed  by  Mr.  Mill, 
(one  of  the  warmest  English  admirers  of  the  system);  they 
are,  moreover,  the  conditions  to  which  Comte  himself 
submits: — "From  the  study  of  the  development  of  human 
intelligence,  in  all  directions,  and  throufrh  all  times,  the  dis- 
covery  arises  of  a  great  fundamental  law,  to  which  it  is 
necessarily  subject,  and  which  has  a  solid  foundation  of  proof, 
both  in  the  facts  of  our  organization,  and  in  our  historical 
experience."  And  we  see  no  particular  reason  to  question 
the  justness  of  these  criteria.  Certainly,  if  man  does  observe 
any  such  uniformity  in  his  intellectual  development  as  is 
supposed,  it  will  not  only  be  displayed  by  his  actual  history, 
but  also  appear  to  be  involved  in  his  very  nature.  Were 
either   species    of  evidence  wanting,  the   phenomena  of  his 


CHAP.  II.]  Theory  of  Nescience.  485 

being  could  not  be  made  the  subject  of  Positive  science.  We 
might  show,  from  the  history  of  humanity,  that  it  has  always 
pursued  a  certain  career;  but  will  this  be  its  career  in  the 
future?  Or  we  might  show,  from  the  nature  of  humanity, 
that  it  is  necessitated  to  pursue  a  certain  career;  but  has 
this  been  its  career  in  the  past  ?  Should  there  be,  however, 
a  convergence  of  these  inductions  to  the  same  purport;  could 
we  demonstrate  that  human  history  has  always  been  what 
might  be  expected  from  our  survey  of  human  nature,  and 
that  human  nature  actually  is  what  might  be  expected  from 
our  survey  of  human  history,  we  might  then  be  in  a  fair  way 
of  attaining  a  true  scientific  law,  by  means  of  which  to 
account  for  the  past,  and  foresee  the  future  career  of  society. 
Whether  such  a  law  actually  obtains  and  is  ascertainable,  we 
do  not  now  inquire,  but  simply  proceed  to  show  that  Comte 
has  fulfilled  neither  its  empirical  nor  theoretical  conditions. 

Of  the  former  class  of  proofs,  the  first  and  most  accessible 
would  be  afforded  by  individual  experience.  We  should  ex- 
pect to  find  the  alleged  law  of  intellection  actually  illustrated 
in  the  development  of  the  most  scientific  minds.  Comte  dis- 
tinctly asserts  this  to  be  the  case  :  "The  point  of  departure  of 
the  individual  and  of  the  race  being  the  same,  the  phases  of  the 
mind  of  a  man  will  correspond  to  the  epochs  of  the  race.  Now 
each  of  us  is  aware,  if  he  looks  back  upon  his  own  history,  that 
he  was  a  theologian  in  his  childhood,  a  metaphysician  in  his 
youth,  and  a  natural  philosopher  in  his  manhood.  All  men 
who  are  up  to  their  age  can  verify  this  for  themselves,"  p.  3, 
vol.  i.  The  only  proper  answer  to  such  an  argument  is 
obvious.  The  author  of  the  Positive  Philosophy  may  certainly 
be  allowed  to  speak  for  himself,  but  not  necessarily  for  the 
rest  of  mankind,  nor  even  for  the  whole  of  that  party  who 
are  unwilling  to  acknowledge  themselves  entirely  behind  the 
age.  It  is  believed,  there  are  still  extant  many  eminent 
persons,  in  whom  the  theological  and  metaphysical  spirit  has 
not  only  survived  the  period  of  adolescence,  but  even  the 
most  mature  attacks  of  Positivism  itself. 

The  next  source  of  empirical  proof  would  be  that  afforded 
by  the  experience  of  the  race.  To  establish  this  law,  it 
would  be  necessary  to  show  that  the  three  periods  have  been 


486  The  Positive  Philosophy.  [part  ir. 

successively  displayed  in  the  actual  history  of  humanity.  The 
propriety  of  this  test  is  recognized  by  Comte  when  he  charac- 
terizes the  ancient  world  as  theological,  the  mediaeval  as 
metaphysical,  and  the  modern  as  Positiv^e.  But  it ■  surely 
requires  no  great  amount  of  historical  erudition  to  expose 
the  fallacy  of  such  a  generalization.  If  we  have  reference 
to  quality  or  quantity,  the  theology  and  metaphysics  of  the 
present  age  will  certainly  compare  with  those  of  any  primi- 
tive era.  Who  will  pretend  that  the  religious  and  philosophic 
instincts  of  humanity  are  on  the  decline,  in  presence  of  such 
gigantic  systems  as  now  prevail  in  modern  Europe?  On  the 
contrary,  it  is  indisputable  that  there  never  was  a  time  when 
the  speculative  energies  of  the  race  were  more  absorbed  in 
theological  and  metaphysical  inquiries,  or  when  theology  and 
metaphysics  were  exalted  to  so  high  a  rank  in  the  scale  of  the 
sciences,  or  when  they  were  so  generally  admitted  to  be 
among  the  legitimate  pursuits  of  the  human  intellect.  He  must 
simply  shut  his  eyes  to  the  great  mass  of  facts  around  him, 
who  goes  into  history  expecting  to  find  it  exhibiting  this  law 
of  the  three  tendencies  succeeding"  and  exhausting  each  other. 
It  is  patent  to  the  whole  world  that  they  all  survive  among  us, 
and  that  their  most  violent  collisions  have  not  as  yet  resulted 
in  the  extinction  of  any  one  of  the  series. 

How  comes  it  then,  that  the  modern  Bacon  should  have 
run  so  blindly  in  the  face  of  universal  experience  ?  Simply 
by  culling  the  facts  to  suit  his  theory.  There  is  no  hypo- 
thesis which  might  not  thus  be  established.  The  literature  of 
historical  science  is  replete  with  examples  of  such  hasty  and 
unfounded  generalization.  This  of  Comte  is  simply  the  last 
and  most  imposing  of  the  train.  His  historical  review,  in 
support  of  his  law  of  the  triple  evolution,  even  if  it  could  be 
pronounced  accurate  so  far  as  it  goes,  actually  proves  nothing 
as  to  the  chief  points  in  controversy,  but  is  open  to  a  valid 
and  unanswerable  objection  from  each  class  of  his  opponents. 

On  the  one  hand,  the  theologian  may  fairly  object  to  it, 
that  it  is  restricted  to  that  very  series  of  nations  whose  career 
is  alleged  to  have  been  determined  by  a  divine  revelation  and 
a  supernatural  Providence.  It  is  observable  that  Comte  docs 
not  pretend  to  look  for  any  full  illustration  of  his  great  law  of 


CHAP.  II.]  Tlicory  of  Nescience.  487 

history  beyond  the  boundaries  of  Christendom.  The  reason 
given  for  this  hmitation  is,  that  oriental  countries  must  be  re- 
garded as  the  seat  of  a  kind  of  sporadic  civihzation,  which, 
having  been  early  detached  from  the  more  compact  and  con- 
tinuous civilization  of  the  West,  was  arrested  in  its  develop- 
ment, and  has  ever  since  been  left  to  run  in  the  vicious  circles 
of  the  primitive  theological  tendency.  If  we  inquire  how  it 
happened  that  such  a  suspension  of  the  law  should  have 
occurred  only  in  heathen  nations,  while  Christian  nations 
have  gone  forward  from  the  theological,  through  the  meta- 
physical, toward  the  Positive  state,  we  are  answered  with 
some  imposing  generalities  about  the  effect  of  European 
climate  and  Caucasian  organization  on  social  development, 
together  with  a  confession  that  the  whole  "  question  of  the 
scene  and  agent  of  the  chief  progression  of  our  race"  is 
insolvable  because  premature  or  radically  inaccessible.  But 
this,  even  if  it  could  satisfy  a  strict  Positivist,  will  not  satisfy  a 
theologian.  What  would  be  his  explanation  we  are  relieved 
by  the  terms  of  the  present  argument  from  inquiring:  Yet, 
the  simple  fact  that  he  professes  to  have  his  own  explanation, 
obviously  imposes  upon  his  Positive  antagonist  the  alternative 
of  driving  him  from  the  field  with  some  counter  explanation, 
or  himself  retiring  into  less  debatable  territory  for  the  histori- 
cal evidence  of  his  theory.  If  humanity,  independent  of 
divine  revelation,  obeys  his  pretended  law  of  human  develop- 
ment, let  him  leave  "  the  little  Jewish  theocracy,  derived  in  an 
accidental  way  from  Egypt,"  and  go  out  into  the  broad  field 
of  universal  history  and  there  gather  up  the  facts  to  verify  it. 
Let  him  take  some  other  form  of  fetichism  or  polytheism  than 
that  which  came  in  contact  with  Christianity ;  for  example, 
Asiatic  or  American  mytholog}^,  and  exhibit  it  to  us  as  spon- 
taneously developing  into  monotheism,  and  thence  declining, 
through  the  metaphysical  transit,  into  Positivism.  Until  this 
has  been  accomplished,  the  supernatural  explanation  must  be 
allowed  to  hold  precedence  of  the  natural,  and  the  whole 
argument  from  historj'-,  so  far  as  theology  is  concerned,  remain 
simply  irrelevant. 

Then,  on  the  other  hand,  the  metaphysician  may  pronounce 
it  equally  irrelevant  as  regards  his  position.     It  is  to  be  re- 


488  The  Positive  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

marked  that  Comte,  not  content  with  excluding  all  but 
Christian  civilization  from  his  estimate,  also  refuses  to  include 
in  it  any  but  physical  subjects,  or  at  least  such  as  are  in  no 
sense  metaphysical  or  supra-physical.  His  reason  for'  this 
restriction  of  course  is,  that,  according  to  his  philosophy,  the 
physical  or  inductive  sciences  alone  are  feasible.  He  main- 
tains that  no  phenomena  exist  but  such  as  can  be  subjected 
to  the  inductive  method,  and  that  no  other  method  is  legiti- 
mate. All  supernatural  or  super-sensuous  phenomena,  such 
as  would  be  displayed  by  a  divine  or  human  spirit,  are  ficti- 
tious ;  and  all  inquiry  into  the  causes  or  essences  of  any 
phenomena,  whether  by  revelation  or  intuition,  is  fatuitous, 
and  to  be  stigmatized  as  mere  infantine  curiosity.  Conse- 
quently, the  only  sciences  which  can  be  allowed  to  enter  into 
his  review  are  those  of  mathematics,  astronomy,  physics, 
physiology  (including  phrenology  as  the  science  of  mind), 
and  sociology  (considered  as  the  extension  of  physiology). 
As  for  the  various  psychical  and  revealed  sciences,  which 
have  so  long  pretended  to  exist,  they  are  to  be  accounted  for 
by  being  ignored.  In  short,  we  are  to  look  for  nothing  in  all 
the  history  of  human  intelligence  but  the  Positive  sciences. 
This  is  certainly  very  convenient  for  the  Positivist ;  but  might 
not  the  metaphysician,  if  allowed  thus  to  choose  his  facts, 
rebut  the  argument  ?  It  will  be  observed,  that  we  are  not  now 
inquiring  into  the  legitimacy  or  feasibility  of  any  of  the 
exscinded  sciences,  but  are  simply  maintaining  that,  in  view 
of  their  notorious  existence  in  the  most  civilized  nations,  for 
anything  that  Comte'a  own  argument  could  prove  to  the  con- 
trary, they  may  continue  to  exist,  each  in  its  own  domain  of 
facts,  and  with  its  own  method  of  dealing  with  those  facts. 
And  now,  when  we  unite  the  two  abatements,  which  must  thus 
be  made,  of  the  historical  evidence  adduced  in  proof  of  this 
law,  into  what  a  meagre  compass  do  we  find  its  voluminous 
pretensions  have  shrunken  ?  It  is  neither  proved  to  be  the 
law  of  the  development  of  the  whole  human  race,  nor  the  law 
of  the  development  of  the  whole  human  intelligence,  since 
there  are  confessedly  vast  portions  of  mankind  and  various 
bodies  of  knowledge  which  have  never  to  any  extent  exhibited 
its  operation.     The  very  utmost  that  could  be  conceded  to  it, 


CHAP.  II.]  Theory  of  Nescience.  4.89 

would  be  that  it  is  the  law  of  the  development  of  the  Positive 
sciences,  or,  to  speak  more  accurately,  of  the  natural  sciences, 
since  they  alone  can  pretend  to  have  become  Positive,  Comte 
himself  admitting  that  what  are  commonly  regarded  as  the 
mental  and  moral  sciences  "  have  nowhere  risen  to  Positivity 
except  in  his  book." 

But  even  that  meagre  concession  cannot  be  made.  Even 
that  last  slender  foothold  must  be  contested.  The  theory  is 
actually  unable  to  maintain  itself  on  the  ground  of  its  own 
chosen  facts.  We  deny  that  the  natural  sciences  themselves 
have  ever  properly  observed  this  law.  Their  history  does 
not  show  that  they  have  emerged  mto  the  final  stage  only  by 
extinguishing  the  two  preceding  stages.  It  is  not  a  matter 
of  fact  that  the  Positive  spirit,  in  those  fields  of  research  where 
it  has  most  predominated,  has  actually  extirpated  the  theo- 
logical or  metaphysical  spirit.  We  may  take  for  our  example 
the  most  Positive  of  all  the  natural  sciences.  As  it  respects 
the  phenomena  of  astronomy,  will  it  be  maintained,  that  the 
tendency  to  refer  them  to  mechanical  laws  has  ever  generally 
and  permanently  supplanted  the  tendency  to  refer  them  also 
to  a  Divine  will,  or  to  second  causes  ?  Individual  exceptions 
indeed  there  always  are;  but  have  astronomers,  as  a  class,  been 
atheists  and  materialists,  or  have  their  most  mathematical 
predictions  had  the  actual  effect,  either  in  the  scientific  or  the 
popular  mind,  of  dissipating  all  religious  belief  in  a  Divine 
Maker  of  suns  and  systems,  or  suppressing  all  speculative 
inquiry  into  the  mode  of  their  production  and  development  ? 
Did  Newton  in  the  act  of  discovering-  the  law  of  gravitation 
cease  to  be  a  theologian?  Did  Kant  in  the  act  of  pro- 
pounding his  cosmic  hypothesis  cease  to  be  a  metaphysician? 
Or  have  theologians  and  metaphysicians  themselves  actually 
surrenderedastronomy  to  Positiv^e  science  ?  Has  not  astronomy 
become  the  very  poetry  of  religion  and  philosophy?  We  are 
not  concerned  as  yet  to  account  for  th3  fact,  but  the  fact  itself 
who  will  deny,  that  even  amid  the  rigid  geometry  and 
mechanics  of  the  heavenly  bodies,  where  inflexible  laws 
reign  supreme,  theology  as  of  old  still  comes  to  adore,  and 
metaphysics  to  speculate? 

And  the  argument  only  cumulates  as  we  descend  to  the 
3-M 


490  The  Positive  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

less  Positive  sciences  of  physics  and  physiology.  However 
much  such  a  result  may  have  been  apprehended,  yet  who  will 
pretend  it  is  actually  the  case  that  atheism  and  materialism 
have  taken  exclusive  possession  of  the  votaries  of  physical 
science?  Have  they  not  as  a  body  set  up  the  notion  of  Nature 
as  a  kind  of  "Unknown  God,"  whom  they  are  willing  that 
theology  should  declare  unto  them  ?  And  do  they  not  pro- 
ceed in  their  researches  by  methods  and  upon  hypotheses, 
which  they  confess  that  metaphysics  alone  can  furnish  them? 
What  are  their  various  theories  of  heat,  light,  electricity, 
organization  and  life,  but  the  existing  metaphysics  of  physical 
science?  and  what  is  their  enthusiastic  admiration  of  nature, 
but  a  kind  of  blind  adoration  of  nature's  God?  We  do  not 
now  explain  this,  but  is  it  not  the  case,  that  there  are  often 
found  among  them  as  much  practical  religion  and  sound 
philosophy  as  among  professional  theologians  or  trained 
metaphysicians? 

To  all  this  may  be  added  the  conclusive  fact,  that  in  those 
nations  and  ages  by  which  the  Positive  tendency  has  been 
most  cultivated,  the  other  two  tendencies  are  still  found 
flourishing  unimpaired  and  unmolested.  Where  the  natural 
sciences  have  reached  the  greatest  perfection,  there  may  also 
be  seen,  not  simply  in  juxtaposition,  but  in  logical  combina- 
tion with  them,  the  theological  and  metaphysical  sciences.  Is 
theology  on  the  decline  in  inductive  England  and  America? 
Are  metaphysics  in  their  decadence  in  positive  France? 
Do  the  Germans  show  themselves  to  be  the  least  theological 
because  the  most  metaphysical  of  modern  nations  ?  Or  will 
it  be  asserted  that  because  the  present  age  is  distinguishable 
for  a  predominance  of  the  scientific  spirit,  it  is  also  distin- 
guishable for  a  decline  of  the  religious  and  philosophic  spirit? 
If  it  is  remarkable  for  its  marvels  of  physical  research  and 
material  civilization,  is  it  not  equally  remarkable  for  its 
expanded  schemes  of  Christian  philanthropy,  and  the  for- 
midable grandeur  of  its  metaphysical  speculations?  And 
were  we  to  ascend  into  that  community  of  thinkers,  who  are 
held  to  express  the  foremost  mind  of  the  race,  might  we  not 
find  that  so  far  from  its  being  the  paramount  tendency  of  the 
human    intellect   to    install    Positive  science    as  the  sum  of 


CHAP.  II.]  Tlicory  of  Nescience.  491 

truth,  it  is  rather  in  danger  of  careering  off  with  the  Phaethon 
of  transcendental  metaphysics,  toward  the  abysses  of  a  kind 
of  crude  and  all-involving  theology?  Must  not  even  Comte 
admit  rivals  in  Hegel  and  Cousin  ? 

We  need  not,  however,  pursue  these  inquiries.  It  is 
already  sufficiently  apparent  what  is  the  value  of  the  his- 
torical argument  for  the  system.  It  miserably  fails  in  the 
very  societies  where  it  should  be  most  conspicuously  estab- 
lished; it  arbitrarily  ignores  the  very  sciences  it  proposes  to 
supplant;  and,  thus  retiring  into  a  mere  corner  of  the  vast 
domain  of  truth,  there  falls  impaled  upon  the  very  facts  it  had 
gathered  for  its  support.  If  "the  evidence  of  human  history" 
shows  anything  in  regard  to  the  question,  it  shows  that  the 
three  tendencies,  instead  of  opposing  and  destroying  one 
another,  have  actually  proceeded  together  in  their  develop- 
ment, over  every  field  of  research  they  entered,  and  are  now 
to  be  found  harmoniously  coexisting  in  the  most  advanced 
nations,  and  the  most  accomplished  minds. 

But  as  yet  we  have  considered  only  one  branch  of  the 
reasoning  by  which,  according  to  the  terms  of  Positivism,  this 
law  must  be  verified.  Even  if  we  had  found  that  member  of 
the  argument  irrefutable,  it  would  of  itself  prove  insufficient 
until  corroborated  by  the  other  member.  The  law  must  be 
upheld  by  their  mutual  support,  or  fall  as  the  keystone  with 
the  arch  into  ruin.  Though  it  had  been  shown  that  humanity 
has  hitherto,  in  some  societies,  and  in  some  sciences,  exhibited 
the  great  triple  evolution,  this  would  not  prove  that  humanity 
will  hereafter,  in  all  other  sciences,  and  in  all  other  societies, 
pursue  the  same  course,  unless  it  could  also  be  shown  that 
such  a  course  is  necessitated  by  its  very  constitution,  and 
involved  in  its  very  procedure.  Theology  and  Metaphysics 
might  have  become  universally  extinct,  and  Positivism  uni- 
versally predominant,  yet  it  would  still  be  a  question  whether 
those  extinct  tendencies  would  not  revive,  and  either  suspend, 
reverse,  or  radically  change  the  whole  social  evolution. 
Before  the  argument  can  be  considered  complete,  it  must  be 
made  to  appear  resultant  from  the  actual  principles  of  human 
nature,  or  from  the  actual  process  of  human  intelligence,  that 
the    three  stages    should  successively    arise,  surmount   and 


492  The  Positive  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

destroy  each  its  predecessor.  When  "  the  facts  of  our  organi- 
zation "  thus  concur  with  "  the  facts  of  our  historical  experi- 
ence," to  show  that  it  is  the  inevitable  course  of  the  race  to 
proceed  from  a  supernatural,  by  a  metaphysical,  toward  a 
natural  explanation  of  all  phenomena,  we  may  then  regard 
the  law  as  fully  verified.  But  this  concurrence  is  precisely 
what  cannot  be  established.  If  we  found  the  historical  argu- 
ment unsupported,  we  shall  now  find  the  theoretical  or  a 
priori  argument  a  still  more  signal  failure. 

The  position  which  must  be  maintained  in  such  an  argu- 
ment is,  that  the  three  tendencies  are  antagonistic  and  irrecon- 
cilable. If  the  human  intellect  is  necessitated  to  proceed 
from  one  to  the  other,  it  must  be  because  they  are  mutually 
repulsive,  and  cannot  in  any  form  and  to  any  extent  be  made 
to  combine  and  coexist. 

This  position  is  taken  by  Comte  when  he  defines  them  as 
"  three  methods  of  philosophizing,  the  character  of  which  is 
essentially  different,  and  even  radically  opposed ; "  and 
throughout  his  analysis  he  represents  them  as  involved  in  a 
three-fold  antagonism,  intellectual,  moral,  and  social,  destined 
to  issue  in  the  utter  extinction  of  theology,  and  the  entire 
supremacy  of  Positivism,  through  the  intervention  of  meta- 
physics. 

Let  us  first  consider  the  intellectual  antagonism  of  theology 
and  Positive  science.  This  is  alleged  to  arise  out  of  the  ne- 
cessity for  observing  and  explaining  facts  by  means  of  theo- 
ries, in  order  to  attain  real  knowledge.  During  the  infancy  of 
reason  and  of  society,  mankind  spontaneously  resort  to  the 
hypothesis  of  a  god,  as  a  mode  of  accounting  for  all  phe- 
nomena. But  this  hypothesis,  so  inevitable  and  useful  for  a 
time,  ceases  to  be  either  necessary  or  tenable,  when  it  is  found 
that  some  phenomena  can  only  be  explained  by  means  of 
natural  laws  which  exclude  the  action  of  a  divine  will ;  and 
since  other  phenomena,  still  attributed  to  the  divine  will,  may 
be  presumed  to  observe  similar  laws  yet  to  be  ascertained,  we 
are  to  conclude  that  the  whole  theory  of  a  Deity  and  a  super- 
natural world  must  ultimately  be  abandoned  and  rendered  ob- 
solete, like  any  other  crude  hypothesis  which  science  has  out- 
grown and  exploded. 


CHAP.  II.]  TJicory  of  Nescience.  493 

But,  if  we  should  admit  that  the  Baconian  method  is  thus 
to  be  taken  as  the  spontaneous  procedure  of  the  whole  human 
intelligence,  and  the  only  source  of  real  knowledge,  what  evi- 
dence have  we  that  the  theological  theory  of  the  universe,  so  to 
call  it,  either  is  or  can  be  assailed  by  any  amount  of  Positive 
science  ?  Wherein  consists  the  incompatibility  of  referring  the 
very  same  phenomena' both  to  natural  laws  and  to  the  divine 
will  ?  or  of  referring  to  the  divine  will,  not  the  phenomena 
only,  but  the  laws  themselves  ?  What  are  all  natural  laws 
but  mere  uniformities  which  mark  the  action  of  the  divine 
will  ?  Because  the  Deity,  in  His  voluntary  determination  of 
the  coexistences  and  successions  of  certain  phenomena,  does 
not  act  capriciously  but  with  an  inflexible  regularity,  are  we  to 
conclude  that  such  regularity  inheres  in  the  phenomena  them- 
selves by  sheer  chance  or  spontaneity,  and  that  His  continuous 
volition  is  not  required  for  its  maintenance?  Or  because  we 
have  ascertained  that  certain  phenomena,  once  attributed  to 
His  direct  agency,  observe  a  fixed  order  in  their  occurrence, 
are  we  to  infer  that  He  has  less  to  do  with  these  than  with 
others  not  thus  orderly  in  their  occurrence  ?  Has  He  abdica- 
ted His  empire  wherever  He  has  set  up  laws  for  its  regulation  ? 
and  must  we  take  the  existence  of  such  laws  to  be  demon- 
strative of  His  non-existence  ?  The  very  contrary  of  this  is 
demanded  by  our  intellectual  constitution.  Natural  laws  can- 
not but  be  regarded  as  the  most  conspicuous  evidences  possi- 
ble of  the  reality  and  presence  of  a  divine  will ;  and  ever}"- 
advance  of  Positive  science,  so  far  from  being  an  invasion  of 
theology,  is  only  a  fresh  demonstration  of  its  validity  ;  an  ad- 
ditional proof  that  the  intelligence  displayed  on  the  face  of 
nature  does  not  belong  to  nature  itself,  but  shines  through 
and  from  beyond  it,  out  of  that  one  Eternal  Mind  by  which 
it  is  upheld  and  directed. 

"Calm,  He  veils  His  will  in  everlasting  laws, 
Which,  and  not  Him,  the  skeptic  seeing,  exclaims, 
'  Wherefore  a  God  ?     The  world  itself  is  God  :' 
And  never  did  a  Christian's  adoration 
So  praise  Him  as  this  skeptic's  blasphemy.'' 

The  most  Positive  of  the  sciences  may  be  cited  in  illustration. 
Are  astronomy  and  theology,  as  embraced  in  one  view,  logi- 


494  ^^^^  Positive  Pliilosophy.  [part  ii. 

cally  inconsistent  or  repellant  ?  That  some  exceptional 
minds  might  take  the  discovery  of  such  a  law  as  gravitation 
to  be  proof  that  the  hypothesis  of  a  God  is  no  longer  neces- 
sary, may.be  admitted  ;  but  that  this  is  the  natural,  or  ration- 
al inference,  can  be  shown  by  nothing  that  appears  in  a  sound 
mental  organization.  On  the  contrary,  since  every  law  pre-sup- 
poses  an  intelligent  law-giver,  we  are  obliged  to  conceive  gravi- 
tation itself  as  nothing  less  than  the  strenuous  exertion  of  the 
Almighty  will  among  the  planetary  masses,  and  the  ultimate  and 
simplest  expression  of  eternal  purpose  in  respect  to  their 
movements.  Astronomy,  so  far  from  assailing  theological 
convictions,  actually  upholds  them  with  all  the  force  of  mathe- 
matical demonstration,  by  inviting  us  to  reverently  conceive 
of  God  Himself  as  that  sublime  Mechanician,  who,  on  the 
theatre  of  immensity,  and  in  view  of  all  intelligent  creatures, 
is  solving  the  most  stupendous  problems  of  motion  and 
matter  that  could  be  imagined  ;  and  every  new  planet  or  star 
gathered  within  its  expanding  horizon,  is  but  a  fresh  accession 
to  the  evidence  whereby  "  the  heavens  declare  the  glory  of 
God." 

Nor  would  the  argument  be  weakened  should  we  imagine 
other  more  complex  phenomena,  such  as  even  the  phenomena 
of  society,  becoming,  as  predicted  by  Comte,  the  subject  of 
Positive  science.  The  laws  of  social  development,  supposing 
such  laws  to  exist,  might  be  so  well  ascertained  and  defined 
as  to  enable  us  to  project  the  course  of  civilization,  in  given 
circumstances,  with  scientific  accuracy;  yet  this  would  not  in- 
validate the  hypothesis  of  a  divine  will  as  the  source  and  ani- 
mus of  those  social  laws.  It  would  rather  demonstrate  its  ex- 
istence where  as  yet  it  is  scarcely  more  than  presumed.  It 
would  simply  show  that  the  course  of  human  history  is  not 
at  the  mercy  of  caprice  or  necessity,  but  that  in  Providence  as 
well  as  in  nature,  throughout  the  spiritual  no  less  than  the 
material  universe,  the  Infinite  Will  is  everywhere  guided  by 
the  Infinite  Reason. 

In  short,  it  may  be  taken  as  an  axiom,  that  Positive  science, 
to  whatever  limit  extended,  could  never  impair  the  validity  of 
theology,  but  must  ever  only  strengthen  its  foundations  and 
enlarge  its  domain.     Though  the  process  of  referring  facts  to 


CHAP.  II.]  Theory  of  Nescience.  495 

laws  had  been  carried  to  the  extreme  of  some  one  summary 
law,  by  means  of  which  the  entire  aggregate  of  phenomena 
could  be  explained,  a  divine  will  would  not  even  then  have 
become  hypothetically  unnecessary,  but  remain  as  that  scien- 
tific postulate  or  ultimate  fact  upon  which  the  whole  fabric  of 
human  knowledge  reposes,  and  without  which  it  could  have 
neither  rational  basis  nor  consistency.  Still  would  it  be  the 
instinctive  tendency  of  the  human  intellect  to  look  up  to  God 
as  that  Infinite  Lawgiver,  whose  potent  volition  perv^ades  and 
conducts  the  mighty  mechanism  of  the  universe,  and  but  for 
whose  immutable  purpose  it  would  fall  into  chaos,  or  vanish 
like  a  dream. 

In  like  manner,  it  may  be  shown  that  there  is  no  moral 
antagonism  of  the  two  tendencies.  It  is  asserted,  that  the 
sentiments  inspired  by  theology,  partaking  of  its  own  illusoiy 
and  transient  nature,  are  repugnant  to  other  more  rational  and 
permanent  sentiments  evoked  by  Positive  science.  While  the 
hypothesis  of  a  God  prevails,  man  draws  courage  and  consola- 
tion from  imagined  access  to  a  divine  will,  and  believes  him- 
self capable  of  modifying  the  universe  by  means  of  his  prayers. 
But  this  hope,  so  inspiring  and  salutary  in  an  infantile  stage 
of  his  development,  he  readily  relinquishes  for  the  more  ani- 
mating and  reasonable  prospect  of  modifying  the  universe  by 
means  of  his  own  personal  resources.  "  We  find  ourselves 
able,"  says  Comte,  "  to  dispense  with  supernatural  aid  in  our 
difficulties  and  sufferings,  in  proportion  as  we  obtain  a  gradual 
control  over  nature  by  a  knowledge  of  her  laws."  He  even 
intimates  that  the  devotional  spirit  already  languishes  in 
scientific  minds ;  and  it  is  not  too  much  for  him  to  anticipate 
a  period  when  the  throne  of  grace  shall  have  become  as 
mythical  as  the  oracle  or  the  auguiy. 

The  shortest  answer  to  all  this  is,  that  such  a  state  of  the 
moral  constitution  of  man  is  simply  impracticable,  if  not  in- 
conceivable. We  may  give  imagination  the  wildest  li- 
cense; we  may  suppose  all  science  and  art  carried  to  their 
utmost  perfection;  yet  what  would  be  the  result?  Our 
astronomy  could  not  remedy  the  planetary  disturbance  it 
might  predict ;  our  meteorology  could  not  improve  tlie 
weather  it  might  prognosticate;    our  physiology    could    not 


49^  The  Positive  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

avert  the  death  it  might  explain;  and  even  our  sociology 
could  not  regenerate  the  civilization  it  might  project.  The 
acquisition  of  omniscience  itself  could  not  invest  mankind 
with  absolute  "control  over  nature,"  or  destroy  their  instinc- 
tive dependence  upon  God,  but,  if  left  without  adequate 
religious  support,  would  either  whelm  them  in  helpless 
bewilderment,  or  leave  them,  as  conscious  children  of  fate, 
to  yield  to  death  and  danger  like  dumb  cattle  or  crushed 
machines. 

We  may  go  even  a  step  further,  and  maintain,  that  the 
theological  spirit,  instead  of  being  supplanted,  is  actually 
invigorated  by  the  Positive  spirit.  Not  only  does  it  assert 
itself  in  presence  of  nature's  most  inflexible  laws,  as  when  the 
Atheist  cries  to  God  in  shipwreck,  or  the  Christian  prays  for 
his  daily  bread;  but  it  may  draw  new  courage  from  its  know- 
ledge of  those  laws,  and  from  the  spectacle  of  that  human 
prowess  acquired  through  such  knowledge.  When  we  be- 
hold what  interventions  in  the  fixed  course  of  nature  our 
weak,  blind  Will  can  accomplish,  shall  we  doubt  that,  in  the 
event  of  an  adequate  spiritual  emergency,  any  intervention 
would  be  too  great  for  that  Will  which,  not  only  itself  lives 
in  all  natural  laws,  but  is  ever  swayed  by  omnipotent  and 
omniscient  love?  Shall  we  deem  the  possible  with  man  im- 
possible with  God?  Shall  we  not  rather  deem  the  possible 
with  God  impossible  with  man,  and  all  the  more  readily 
believe,  that  the  "modifications  of  the  universe,"  just  declared 
impracticable  to  human  science  and  art,  were  once  actually 
effected  by  divine  knowledge  and  power,  when  the  sun  and 
moon  stood  still  in  the  vale  of  Ajalon;  when  it  rained  out  of 
the  brazen  sky  of  Carmel;  when  death  was  dragged  in 
triumph  after  the  fiery  chariot  of  Elijah;  and  when  Messiah 
came  to  regenerate  by  His  Church  the  whole  social  develop- 
ment of  mankind?  The  limited  power  of  man  over  the 
universe  only  helps  us  to  conceive  of  the  unlimited  power  of 
God,  and  may  but  impel  us  to  resort  to  Him  in  all  the  more 
confidence  and  hope.  And  though  our  spiritual  exigencies  do 
not  require  the  miracles  incident  to  less  favored  eras,  yet  may 
we  still  aspire  after  whatsoever  things  are  in  accordance  with 
His  will, and  into  that  lofty  region  where  His  Spirit  communes 


CHAP.  II.]  Theory  of  Ncsciejice.  497 

with  ours,  ascend  out  of  the  rigid  mechanism  of  nature,  for 
such  assurances  and  convictions  as  shall  enable  us  to  return 
and  triumphantly  withstand  her  most  appalling  terrors,  or 
placidly  yield  to  her  most  inevitable  disasters. 

Not  even  the  supposed  laws  of  history  could  oppose  any 
barrier  against  such  access  of  the  finite  spirit  to  the  Infinite 
Spirit.  We  may  imagine  the  course  of  Providence,  in  the 
direction  of  individual  or  social  development,  to  observe  uni- 
formities as  inflexible  as  those  of  mechanics;  yet  this  need  not 
shake  our  faith  in  the  freedom  either  of  human  or  divine 
volition.  It  would  only  convince  us  that  the  law  of  holiness 
is  at  least  as  fixed  as  the  law  of  gravitation,  and  that  spiritual 
death  as  inevitably  ensues  upon  the  infraction  of  the  one,  as 
physical  death  upon  the  infraction  of  the  other.  We  should 
but  be  the  better  able  to  conceive  of  that  God,  with  whom 
we  have  to  do,  as  not  less  uniform  in  His  determination  of 
moral  than  of  material  phenomena,  and  find  in  ?Iis  promises 
and  provisions  all  the  more  rational  basis  for  our  prayers  and 
hopes,  whether  for  individual  or  social  regeneration. 

As  positive  science  could  never  invalidate  the  ideas  of 
theology,  so  it  could  never  eradicate  the  instincts  of  piety. 
The  spectacle  of  an  entire  universe  under  the  regulation  of 
laws,  would  not  only  be  logically  inconsistent,  but  morally 
appalling,  without  the  notion  of  a  Beneficent  Lawgiver;  and 
were  it  presented  to  the  pious  soul,  instead  of  beholding  in  it 
a  mere  iron  mechanism  of  fate,  he  would  only  regard  it  as  an 
exquisite  system  of  divine  volitions,  susceptible  of  being- 
made  to  work  together  for  his  good,  and  of  all  its  anomalies 
pronounce  none  so  monstrous  as  would  be  that  of  a  single 
legitimate  prayer  left  unanswered,  worse  even  than  the 
sceptic's  notion  of  a  miracle,  as  appearing  not  simply  a  sus- 
pension of  the  laws  of  nature,  but  even  of  the  will  of  God. 

It  would  seem  scarcely  necessary  now  to  argue  that  there 
can  be  no  social  antagonism  of  the  two  tendencies.  This  is 
admitted  to  be  a  mere  consequence  of  their  intellectual  and 
moral  antagonism.  The  war  between  them,  in  any  society 
where  it  is  waged,  it  is  asserted,  must  issue  in  political  revo- 
lution. So  long  as  a  theological  theory  prevails,  and  the 
consequent  moral  sentiments  abound,  the  mass  of  individuals 
3-N 


498  The  Positive  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

spontaneously  concur  upon  a  basis  of  common  opinions  with 
some  degree  of  stability,  order,  and  peace.  But  no  sooner  do 
these  fundamental  opinions  begin  to  be  assailed  by  heresy, 
infidelity,'  and  schism,  than  ancient  institutions  become  un- 
settled, and  society  is  at  the  alternative  of  continuing  in 
anarchy,  or  assuming  a  new  organization.  According  to 
Comte,  the  most  civilized  societies  are  now  passing  through 
this  anarchical  condition,  consequent  upon  a  decline  of  theo- 
logical, and  rise  of  Positive  opinions,  effected  by  the  critical 
spirit  of  modern  metaphysics;  but  it  is  his  expectation  that 
Positivism  will  ultimately  so  predominate  over  Monotheism 
as  to  place  Christianity  on  a  par  with  Mohammedanism,  and 
at  length  consign  the  Church  to  antiquity,  as  a  mere  worn 
chrysalis,  out  of  which  civilization  shall  have  struggled  forth 
into  new  life  and  glory. 

An  argument  which  begins  in  absurdity,  can  only  accumu- 
late absurdity.  This  notion  of  substituting  Positive  for 
theological  opinions  in  the  social  organism,  is  even  more 
chimerical  than  that  of  substituting  the  scientific  for  the 
devotional  spirit  in  the  moral  constitution.  As  yet,  Positive 
opinions  do  not  exist  in  the  form  of  any  such  received  body 
of  doctrine,  as  could  afford  a  nucleus  for  social  concurrence ; 
and  were  such  opinions  ever  to  predominate,  they  would 
prove,  if  not  utterly  fatuitous,  yet  thoroughly  disorganizing. 
The  picture,  which  Comte  elaborates,  of  a  new  social  organi- 
zation resulting  from  such  opinions,  and  composed  of  a  race 
of  virtual  atheists,  absorbed  in  the  worship  of  their  own 
humanity  as  a  deity,  cannot  exist  even  in  imagination  without 
instantly  dissolving  into  anarchy,  or  relapsing  to  barbarism. 

Indeed,  so  far  from  admitting  that  theological  opinions 
could  ever  be  extirpated  from  the  social  constitution  by  Posi- 
tive science,  we  might  rather  maintain  that  it  is  ultimately 
destined  to  strengthen  and  extend  them.  Truth,  from  what- 
ever source  it  emanates,  must  yet  be  found  inconsistent  with 
all  other  truth ;  and  were  human  knowledge  thoroughly  con- 
summated and  diffused,  it  would  but  demonstrate  the  God  of 
nature  and  of  history  to  be  the  God  of  revelation,  with  such 
universal  and  conspicuous  illustration  that  all  should  know 
the  Lord,  from  the  least  even  unto  the  greatest. 


CHAP.  II.]  Theory  of  Nescience. 


499 


The  foregoing  argument  in  respect  to  the  relations  of  the- 
ology and  Positive  science  has  virtually  secured  that  in  re- 
spect to  the  relations  of  both  to  metaphysics.  It  is  only  on 
the  supposition  that  the  two  extremes  of  the  series  are  antag- 
onistic, that  the  intermediate  term  could  acquire  any  hostile 
bearing.  That  supposition  having  been  disproved,  we  must 
regard  the  abstractions  of  metaphysics  as  comparatively  harm- 
less and  inoperative.  The  mere  theoretical  substitution  of  the 
entity  of  "  Nature  "  for  the  Deity,  of  "  phenomena  "  for  divine 
manifestations,  of  "cause  "  or  "  force  "  for  the  divine  will,  and 
of  "laws"  for  the  uniformities  of  divine  action,  instead  of 
marking  the  deterioration  of  theology,  is  only  to  be  taken  as 
the  convenient  technicality  of  science  ;  and  heresy,  infidelity, 
and  schism,  so  far  from  decomposing  the  theological  system 
of  society,  are  but  so  many  purgative  processes,  by  which  it  is 
being  cleansed  and  perfected.  While,  as  respects  the  relation 
of  metaphysics  to  Positive  science,  it  would  not  be  difficult  to 
show  that  the  progress  of  the  latter  actually  depends  upon 
the  progress  of  the  former;  and  that  were  both  completed, 
they  would  acquire  rational  support  and  consistency  only  by 
means  of  theology ;  or,  in  other  words,  that  the  normal  order 
of  the  three  pursuits  is  the  exact  reverse  of  the  order  alleged, 
and  that  science,  in  escaping  from  the  pupilage  of  theology, 
and  passing  under  the  discipline  of  metaphysics,  does  not 
then  recoil  with  parricidal  and  suicidal  blow  upon  the  parent 
that  nurtured  her,  and  the  master  by  whom  she  is  trained  ; 
but  is  rather  destined  to  return,  though  after  long  estrangement, 
and  by  a  circuitous  route,  under  the  guidance  of  a  sound 
metaphysic,  back  to  the  feet  of  that  ancient  theology  from 
whose  loins  she  sprang,  and  there  unite  in  rendering  the  know- 
ledge of  man  coincident  with  the  knowledge  of  God  and  the 
truth  as  it  is  in  nature,  everywhere  congruous  with  the  truth 
as  it  is  in  revelation. 

Upon  such  profound  inquiries,  however,  we  do  not  yet  ven- 
ture. We  have  now  sufficiently  examined  both  species  of 
testimony  adduced  in  support  of  this  supposed  law  of  intel- 
lectual development.  It  fulfills  neither  of  the  prescribed  con- 
ditions of  such  a  law.  It  is  as  wholly  unsustained  by  the  evi- 
dence of  human  nature,  as  we  found  it  to  be  by  the  evidence 


500  The  Positive  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

of  human  history.  The  facts  of  our  mental,  moral,  and  social 
constitution,  concur  with  the  facts  of  historical  experience,  in 
showing  that  the  three  pursuits,  instead  of  waging  extermina- 
ting warfare,  are  but  so  many  allied  interests  of  truth,  equally 
spontaneous,  legitimate,  and  permanent. 

And  now,  were  any  illustration  needed  to  confirm  such  an 
argument,  where  could  we  find  a  better  than  this  very  system 
itself?  What  is  the  "  Positive  Philosophy  "  but  a  product  of 
the  metaphysical  tendency  ?  What  is  the  "  Positive  Religion  " 
but  a  product  of  the  theological  tendency  ?  And  can  we  con- 
ceive of  any  abstractionism  more  wild  than  that  which  would 
construct  the  entire  fabric  of  human  knowledge  out  of  an 
empty  generalization  of  history  ?  or  of  any  fetichism  more 
gross  than  that  which,  having  studiously  invested  the  notion 
of  humanity  with  the  attributes  of  Deity,  would  then  invite 
mankind  to  love  and  serve  it  as  their  god  ?  Thus,  by  a  recoil 
of  truth  from  beneath  the  foot  of  error,  wherein  something  of 
the  sublimity  of  retribution  is  joined  to  the  rigor  of  demon- 
stration, does  this  system  not  only  fail  on  its  own  premises,  but 
remain  a  conspicuous  monument  of  the  failure.  Professing  to 
deride  theology  and  metaphysics,  it  stands  forth  as  itself,  in 
its  own  perverted  sense  of  the  words,  the  most  metaphysical 
of  all  metaphysics,  and  the  most  theological  of  all  theologies. 

We  ought  not  now  to  be  charged  with  any  undue  theologi- 
cal or  metaphysical  prejudice  in  concluding  this  discussion 
with  a  single  practical  lesson  to  be  learned  by  each  of  the  two 
obnoxious  professions  from  this  system. 

The  metaphysician  may  find  in  it  new  evidence  of  the  in- 
sufficiency of  any  one  method  of  research  as  pursued  to  the 
exclusion  of  every  other.  If  there  is  any  one  method,  upon 
which  it  might  seem  safe  to  place  such  entire  reliance,  it  is,  per- 
haps, that  inductive  procedure  which  is  the  characteristic  and 
the  pride  of  the  English  mind.  We  have  been  wont  to  boast 
of  the  healthy  appetite  for  facts,  which  it  has  fostered  among 
us,  and  to  congratulate  ourselves  on  our  consequent  happy 
seclusion  from  the  devastating  career  of  foreign  transcendent- 
alism. All  that  was  needed  to  undeceive  us  is  a  system  like  the 
one  before  us,  avowedly  proceeding  on  our  favorite  Baconian 
method  toward  the  very  worst  results  of  German  speculation. 


CHAP.  II.]  Theory  of  Nescience.  501 

The  simple  truth  is,  that  while  revelation,  intuition,  and  induc- 
tion, are  equally  legitimate,  within  their  own  appropriate 
spheres,  yet,  in  the  existing  fragmentary  and  schismatic  con- 
dition of  human  knowledge,  neither  can  be  pushed  beyond 
the  limits  imposed  upon  it  by  the  others,  except  at  its  own 
peril.  Theology  may  not  safely  invade  such  a  question  as 
the  antiquity  of  the  globe,  since  that  is  a  legitimate  problem 
of  Positive  science ;  and  Positive  science  may  not  safely  in- 
vade such  a  question  as  the  regeneration  of  society,  since  that 
is  a  legitimate  problem  of  theology  ;  and  neither  may  safely 
invade  such  questions  as  the  modes  or  relations  of  matter  and 
spirit,  since  those  are  legitimate  problems  of  metaphysics. 
Only  when  they  shall  have  together  accomplished  their  re- 
spective missions  will  the  world  be  in  possession  of  one  ho- 
mogeneous body  of  truth. 

The  theologian,  in  like  manner,  may  only  find  in  this  sys- 
tem a  fresh  illustration  of  the  tendency  of  depraved  reason  to 
dispense  with  the  idea  of  God.  Such  is  the  perversity  of  man's 
intellect,  that  if  able  to  account  for  the  creation  on  any  other 
theory  than  that  of  a  Creator,  he  will  disregard  even  the  evi- 
dence of  intuition  and  revelation.  Hence  we  have  that  glori- 
ous idea,  without  which  history  were  a  blank  and  the  world  a 
wreck,  represented  to  us  as  a  mere  product  of  the  speculative 
propensity,  to  be  traced  back  to  its  origin  in  savage  supersti- 
tion, and  even  in  a  supposed  nascent  theologizing  among 
"  some  select  animals,"  and  then,  in  its  mature  form,  to  be 
treated  as  a  mere  tentative  hypothesis,  which  the  race  is 
already  in  haste  to  abandon.  But  we  need  not  fear  that  any 
amount  of  science  and  art  could  ever  enable  man,  either  in 
theory  or  in  practice,  to  do  without  a  God.  The  Deity  is  not 
so  meagre  in  His  resources,  nor  has  He  constructed  the  exist- 
ing universe  on  such  a  diminutive  scale,  that  His  creatures  can 
ever  get  beyond  the  necessity  of  admitting  their  ignorance 
and  helplessness.  Science  after  science  may  push  its  adven- 
turous way  into  the  arcana  of  nature,  but  it  will  only  be  to 
return  with  tidings  of  still  unexplored  regions  of  truth  which 
it  has  not  dared  to  invade  even  with  the  footsteps  of  a  conjec- 
ture. Every  earthly  branch  of  knowledge  might  be  carried 
to  perfection,  until  the  whole  problem  of  the  planet  should  be 


502  The  Positive  Philosophy.  [part  ii, 

solved  ;  but  there  would  still  remain  innumerable  other  orbs, 
of  whose  genesis  and  apocalypse  we  could  not  form  so  much 
as  a  conception.  Philosophy  might  have  dived  down  toward 
the  eldest,  secrets  of  creation,  and  mounted  up  toward  a  solu- 
tion of  its  whole  complex  enigma ;  but  there  would  still  re- 
main even  then  the  Creator  Himself,  capable  of  making  and 
unmaking  universe  after  universe  to  all  eternity.  Never, 
while  man  is  man  and  God  is  God,  shall  mystery  cease  to 
hover  between  them,  as  at  once  a  stimulus  to  the  curiosity 
and  a  barrier  to  the  pride  of  human  reason.  Before  the 
seraph  and  the  sage  alike,  is  it  the  glory  of  God  to  conceal  a 
thing. 


CHAPTER    IIL 


THE  ABSOLUTE  PHILOSOPHY  OR   THEORY  OF 
OMNISCIENCE. 


Having  discussed  the  claims  of  the  Positive  Philosophy  to 
an  exhaustive  theory  of  knowledge  and  complete  system  of 
the  sciences,  we  proceed  to  consider  that  opposite  theory  and 
system,  known  as  the  Absolute  Philosophy.  It  has  been 
brought  to  a  curious  issue  in  the  course  of  modern  thought 
and  research.  Two  rival  schools,  founded  in  different  nations, 
and  headed  by  the  most  powerful  thinkers  of  the  age,  are 
pitted  against  each  other  upon  the  question  whether  such  a 
philosophy  is  possible.  The  German  philosophers  not  only 
include  it  among  the  legitimate  pursuits  of  the  human  mind, 
but  rank  it  at  the  very  head  of  the  sciences,  as  being  their 
source,  and  embracing  their  whole  content.  The  English 
philosophers,  on  the  contrary,  labor  to  prove  it  wholly  illusive 
and  futile,  and  insist  upon  limiting  all  rational  research  to  the 
sphere  of  finite  phenomena:  while  the  French  philosophers 
would  seem  to  be  more  divided  among  themselves,  both 
tendencies  having  been  developed  in  an  extreme  form  by  the 
systems  of  Cousin  and  Comtc.  The  Absolute  Philosophy 
and  the  Positive  Philosophy,  or  the  Philosophy  of  the  Infinite 
and  the  Philosophy  of  the  Conditioned,  as  the  opposite  doc- 
trines variously  claim  to  be  called,  are  in  fact  becoming  the 
two  poles  of  modern  speculation,  toward  which,  with  different 
degrees  of  divergence,  advanced  thinkers  in  all  lands  are 
rallying.  For  so  does  thought  from  having  been  national 
grow  to  be  catholic,  and  philosophy  vindicate  herself  as  the 
daughter  of  humanity. 

503 


S04  The  Absolute  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

What  is  more  singular,  the  rehgious  party  cannot  be  said 
to  have  fairly  committed  itself  to  either  extreme.  In  both 
schools  the  very  same  speculations  are  wielded  for  the  defence 
and  for  the  destruction  of  revealed  theology.  It  is  well 
known,  for  example,  that  the  Hegelian  philosophy  of  the 
Absolute  became  in  the  hands  of  one  faction  mere  pantheistic 
infidelity,  while  another  faction  professed  to  find  in  it  nothing 
less  than  a  rational  explanation  of  the  most  peculiar  doctrines 
of  Christianity.  In  like  manner,  the  Hamiltonian  philosophy 
of  the  Conditioned  is  taken  by  some  late  thinkers  as  the  basis 
of  a  purely  revealed  divinity,  while  others  are  in  haste  to  erect 
upon  it,  with  the  same  logic,  a  mere  scientific  atheism.  Be- 
tween Marheineke  and  Strauss  of  the  one  school,  or  between 
Mansel  and  Spencer  of  the  other,  there  are  really  more  serious 
differences  than  between  the  schools  themselves  ;  so  diversely 
has  each  master  been  interpreted  by  his  disciples.  We  by  no 
means  infer  from  this  that  the  whole  controversy  is  harmless 
dr  useless,  but  rather  take  it  to  be  illustrative  of  an  axiom 
dominant  through  all  the  sciences — metaphysical  as  well  as 
physical — that  in  each  of  them  may  be  found  antagonistic 
theories  neither  of  which  is  wholly  irreconcilable  with  Scrip- 
ture, but  which,  by  their  own  mutual  collisions,  are  destined 
to  issue  in  its  support  and  illustration.  There  is,  indeed,  too 
much  truth,  as  well  as  error,  involved  in  these  formidable  con- 
flicts between  the  giant  intellects  of  our  time  for  the  Chris- 
tian theologian  to  think  of  either  despising  or  disparaging 
them. 

The  whole  subject,  it  is  true,  is  both  abstruse  and  hack- 
neyed, and  many,  no  doubt,  have  already  retired  from  it  as  a 
mere  labyrinth  of  wordy  notions,  into  which  whoever  enters 
only  becomes  the  more  bewildered  the  farther  he  wanders. 
We  are  not  so  rash  as  to  think  of  attempting,  at  this  late  day, 
any  original  route  over  the  trodden  field;  but,  it  may  be,  that 
by  taking  a  position  somewhat  above  and  beyond  it,  wc  shall 
not  only  gain  a  fresher  and  more  comprehensive  view,  but  be 
able  at  length  to  connect  and  complete  the  researches  of 
other  explorers.  In  other  words,  could  the  whole  question 
be  sifted  from  the  literature  which  has  been  accumulating 
around  it,  and  all  possible  as  well  as  actual  opinions  respect- 


CHAP.  III.]  Theory  of  Omniscience.  505 

ing  it  exhibited  in  some  exhaustive  synopsis,  we  should  then 
have  before  us  the  materials  for  a  final  judgment. 

Now  it  will  be  found  that  there  are  five,  and  only  five,  dis- 
tinct questions  which  can  logically  be  raised  in  reference  to 
the  Absolute:  1st.  Is  it  conceivable?  2d.  Is  it  credible? 
3d.  Is  it  cognizable?  4th.  Is  it  revealable ?  5th.  Is  it  demon- 
strable? We  name  them  in  the  order  of  their  importance, 
and  propose  to  pass  briefly  through  the  series,  affirming 
each  as  the  basis  for  affirming  the  next,  until  we  reach  the 
last,  in  which  we  hold  that  philosophy  is  destined  to  rest  as 
the  goal  alike  of  reason  and  of  faith. 

The  first  problem  relates  to  the  conceivability  of  the  Abso- 
lute. It  is  not  whether  the  Absolute  exists  really  and 
ideally,  nor  yet  whether  we  conceive  it  as  it  really  exists,  but 
simply  whether  we  can  conceive  it  at  all,  in  any  form  or  to 
any  extent.  Is  the  Unconditioned  an  object  of  legitimate 
thought?  Does  the  mind  act  illusively  and  impotently  or 
sanely  and  vigorously  when  it  strives  to  think  of  the  In- 
finite? 

This  question  is  obviously  fundamental  to  both  religion 
and  science,  and  strangely  enough,  has  been  answered  nega- 
tively by  the  partizans  of  both  interests.  The  religious  wing 
of  the  Hamiltonians,  while  denying  the  conceivability  of  the 
Infinite,  admit  its  credibility,  and  even  maintain  that  it 
becomes  an  object  of  faith  precisely  because  it  cannot  be  an 
object  of  thought,  or  that  faith  is  complemental  to  thought  in 
practically  apprehending  it.  "By  a  wonderful  revelation," 
says  Hamilton,  "we  are' thus,  in  the  very  consciousness  of 
our  inability  to  conceive  aught  above  the  relative  and  finite, 
inspired  with  a  belief  in  the  existence  of  something  uncon- 
ditioned beyond  the  sphere  of  all  comprehensible  reality." 
And  Mansel,  on  the  ground  of  the  same  distinction,  endeavors 
to  conserve  the  interests  not  merely  of  piety,  but  of  apolo- 
getics, by  arguing  that  rationalism  destroys  itself  in  the  very 
effort  to  think  what  cannot  be  thought,  but  must  be  simply 
believed.  "We  are  compelled,  by  the  constitution  of  our 
minds,  to  believe  in  the  existence  of  an  Absolute  and  Infinite 
Being, — a  belief  which  appears  forced  upon  us,  as  the  comple- 
3-0 


5o6  The  Absolute  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

ment  of  our  consciousness  of  the  relative  and  finite.  But  the 
instant  we  attempt  to  analyze  the  ideas  thus  suggested  to  us, 
in  the  hope  of  attaining  to  an  intelligible  conception  of  them, 
we  are  on  every  side  involved  in  inextricable  confusion  and 
contradiction." 

If  our  present  argument  were  only  with  this  division  of 
the  school,  it  would  be  enough  to  object  that  the  reasoning, 
even  if  sound,  must  defeat  its  avowed  aim.  Like  some  blun- 
derbuss whose  rebound  is  more  destructive  than  its  projectile, 
it  would  prove  entirely  too  much  for  all  parties.  Instead  of 
conserving  a  revealed  theology  by  destroying  rational 
theology,  it  would  simply  undermine  both,  and  render 
science  and  religion  alike  nugatory. 

For  what  other  effect  could  it  have  than  to  annihilate  all 
faith,  as  well  as  thought,  in  respect  to  the  Absolute.  If  the 
existence  of  an  Infinite  and  Absolute  Being  is  as  incon- 
ceivable as  that  of  a  "  circular  parallelogram,"  it  is  surely 
quite  as  incredible.  The  incognitable  cannot  be  other  than 
also  the  incredible,  since  any  mental  object  which  contravenes 
the  laws  of  thought  must  also  contravene  the  laws  of  faith. 
He  who  dreams  that  he  believes  what  he  does  not  or  cannot 
think,  neither  thinks  nor  believes  at  all,  but  only  dreams. 
And  when  sane  and  waking  men  are  found  actually  attempt- 
ing to  draw  square  circles  or  round  squares,  we  may  expect 
to  find  them  believing  in  an  Absolute,  their  conception  of 
which  is  a  mere  bundle  of  contradictions,  or  "fasciculus  of 
negations,  bound  together  by  the  aid  of  language,"  but  des- 
tined, like  a  torpedo,  to  explode  at  the  touch  of  analysis  in 
glaring  absurdity. 

It  is  no  escape  from  this  to  distinguish  the  cogitable  from 
the  existible,  and  argue  that  "the  impossible  to  thought" 
may  still  be  "  the  possible  in  reality."  We  are  not  maintaining 
that  our  thought  is  a  condition  or  criterion  of  existence,  but 
simply  that  it  is  a  condition  or  criterion  of  our  faith  as  to 
what  exists.  The  credible,  if  not  bounded  by  the  conceivable, 
is  at  least  concentric  therewith.  If  any  choose  to  affirm  that 
round  squares  or  square  circles  are  really  possible  in  the 
sphere  of  objective  existence,  we  insist  that  to  us  they  are 
not    credible,    because    not    even    conceivable;    and,    in    like 


CHAP.  III.]  Theory  of  Oviniscience.  507 

manner,  that  our  faith  must  revolt  with  our  thought  from  an 
Absolute  which  is  apprehended  as  self-contradictory. 

Neither  will  it  avail  to  say  that  belief  in  the  infinite  is  a 
spontaneous  act  of  the  mind  into  which  thought  commonly 
does  not  enter,  or  which  is  compulsory  upon  us  in  spite  of 
any  thinking  to  the  contrary.  We  doubtless  have  some 
intuitive  convictions  which  no  sophistry  can  shake,  as,  for 
example,  our  faith  in  the  existence  of  an  external  world ;  but 
none  of  them,  when  encogitated,  will  be  found  to  involve  a 
negation  or  destruction  of  thought.  Otherwise  it  would 
appear  that  we  are  subsisting  upon  plain  absurdities  with  a 
nature  divided  against  itself,  or  that  we  are  constitutionally 
compelled  to  believe  what,  so  soon  as  v/e  think  it,  we  are 
constitutionally  compelled  to  disbelieve. 

The  whole  argument,  indeed,  of  the  Hamiltonian  divines, 
simply  destroys  itself  by  reducing  them  to  a  choice  of  incon- 
ceivabilities; or  rather  by  developing,  as  an  alternative,  two 
other  inconceivabilities,  quite  as  revolting  and  absurd  as  the 
one  they  have  alleged.  We  may  retort,  with  their  own 
favorite  logic  of  contradictories :  ist.  That  it  is  inconceivable 
that  we  could  believe  what  we  cannot  believe;  and,  2d.  That 
it  is  doubly  inconceivable  that  God  should  be  both  the 
author  and  object  of  such  impossible  belief 

We  do  not,  however,  here  insist  upon  this  refutation,  as  it 
would  anticipate  our  second  problem,  and  is,  moreover,  con- 
clusive only  against  one  wing  of  the  school.  By  far  the  most 
consistent  party  are  those  who  boldly  accept  the  issue,  to 
which  they  are  driven  by  their  own  logic,  of  a  thorough 
scepticism,  religious  as  well  as  scientific,  in  respect  to  the 
Infinite,  and  a  consequent  restriction  of  faith,  no  less  than 
thought,  within  the  bounds  of  the  finite.  And  it  is  only 
when  the  reasoning  assumes  such  a  portentous  import  that  it 
merits  examination. 

It  may  be  questioned,  however,  whether  there  ever  has 
been  a  metaphysical  controversy  in  which  such  brilliant 
dialectics  have  been  displayed,  with  no  other  effect  than  to 
leave  truth  worsted  at  the  hands  of  logic.  What  unsophisti- 
cated mind  imagines  or  spontaneously  grants  that  its  idea  of 
the  God  it  adores  is  a  mere  negation  or  absurdity?     And  yet, 


5o8  Tlie  Absolute  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

once  admit  the  specious  premises  of  these  logicians,  and 
reason  is  drawn  from  her  moorings  into  an  insidious  circle 
of  thought  which  contracts  as  it  proceeds,  until,  in  spite  of 
her  recoil,-  she  is  engulfed  amid  the  wildest  contradictions. 
At  one  moment,  it  is  maintained  that  our  minds  are  finite,  and 
therefore  cannot  conceive  the  Infinite;  the  next,  that  the 
conception  of  the  Infinite,  when  analyzed,  proves  self-contra- 
dictory; and  in  fine,  that  these  two  propositions  so  corroborate 
each  other  as  to  force  us  into  the  dilemma  of  either  believing 
the  Infinite  to  be  inconceivable  or  conceiving  it  to  be  unbe- 
lievable. We  can  escape  the  revolting  conclusion  only  by 
strictly  questioning  each  term  and  premise  from  which  it  is 
drawn. 

Let  it  be  observed  that  there  are  three  distinct  senses  of  the 
inconceivable  :  ist.  That  of  which  we  can  have  no  notion 
whatever,  which  we  cannot  even  attempt  to  think,  but  sponta- 
neously pronounce  unthinkable,  or  beyond  the  province  of 
thought.  2d.  That  of  which  we  can  form  only  a  self-contra- 
dictory notion,  which  we  may  attempt  to  think,  but  in  the 
effort  find  to  be  destructive  of  thought.  3d.  That  of  which 
we  can  form  only  a  partial,  yet  still  positive  and  consistent 
notion,  which  we  may  vigorously  endeavor  to  think,  but  which 
will  still  baffle  and  overmaster  thought,  when  tasked  to  its 
utmost  capacity.  It  is  only  in  this  last  sense  that  we  admit 
the  Infinite  to  be  inconceivable.  We  do  have  some  notion  of 
an  Absolute  God,  and  a  notion  which,  however  meagre  it  be, 
is  at  least  free  from  "  contradictory  opposites." 

At  the  outset,  it  should  not  be  forgotten  that  the  con- 
ceptive  faculty  is  not  the  same  in  all  minds  or  moods,  and 
must  vary  with  the  matter  or  object  upon  which  it  is  exercised. 
When  that  object  is  the  Infinite,  though  the  most  capacious 
mind,  in  its  most  elevated  mood,  should  strive  to  conceive  it, 
and  though  the  conception  formed,  as  far  as  it  goes,  should 
be  an  energetic  affirmation  of  thought,  yet  must  it  neverthe- 
less fall  short  of  the  transcendent  reality.  But  such,  also, 
must  be  our  conception  of  the  finite.  The  material  universe, 
for  example,  as  far  as  already  explored,  involves  magnitudes 
of  time,  space,  and  force,  quite  as  overwhelming  as  the  infini- 
tudes of  divine  eternity,  immensity  and  omnipotence  ;  or  if 


CHAP.  III.]  Theory  of  Omniscience.  509 

there  be  any  difference,  the  latter  ideas  are  really  more  posi- 
tive and  vigorous,  if  not  more  complete  and  precise,  than  the 
former,  owing  to  the  fact  that  they  have  contrasts  in  our  own 
personal  consciousness,  by  which  they  are  thrown  into  relief  as 
objects  of  distinct  apperception,  rather  than  of  sensuous  imagi- 
nation. 

So  long,  then,  as  the  inconceivable  is  held  to  be  merely  that 
which  transcends  thought  in  its  legitimate  exercise,  there  need 
be  no  argument ;  but  when  it  is  defined  to  be  that  which  actu- 
ally contravenes  thought,  or  that  which  thought  itself  ex- 
cludes by  its  own  action  as  self-contradictory,  and  to  it  im- 
possible, then  a  very  different  question  is  presented.  While 
admitting  that  our  conception  of  Deity  is,  and  must  ever  be, 
only  approximate,  we  must  still  insist  that,  besides  being  posi- 
tive, it  is  perfectly  congruous  or  consistent,  and  that  the  con- 
tradictions alleged  to  be  involved  in  it  are  purely  imaginary. 
This  will  appear,  if  we  carefully  sift  the  several  notions  of  in- 
finity, absoluteness,  and  causality  into  which  that  conception 
is  analyzed  by  these  thinkers,  and  which  are  pronounced  by 
them  to  be  irreconcilable. 

Now,  it  is  admitted  even  by  Hamilton,  that  the  Absolute 
and  the  Infinite  are,  from  one  point  of  view,  two  consistent, 
though  distinct  phases  of  the  Unconditioned  :  "  The  uncondi- 
tioned, in  our  use  of  language,  denotes  the  genus  of  which  the 
Infinite  and  Absolute  are  species.  The  term  absolute  is  of  a 
twofold  ambiguity,  corresponding  to  the  double  signification 
of  the  word  in  Latin :  i .  AbsoliUum  means  what  is  freed  or 
loosed ;  in  which  sense  the  absolute  will  be  what  is  aloof  from 
relation,  comparison,  limitation,  condition,  dependence,  &c. 
In  this  meaning  the  Absolute  is  not  opposed  to  the  Infinite. 
2.  Absolntum  means  finished,  perfected,  completed  ;  in  which 
sense  the  Absolute  will  be  what  is  out  of  relation,  &c.,  as 
finished,  perfect,  complete,  total.  In  this  acceptation — and  it 
is  that  in  which,  for  myself,  I  exclusively  use  it — the  Absolute 
is  diametrically  opposed  to,  is  contradictory  of,  the  Infinite." 
It  is  therefore  only  when  the  words  are  taken  in  their  secon- 
dary and  less  obvious  sense,  that  it  is  pretended  they  are  con- 
flictive.  We  may,  however,  not  only  choose  for  ourselves  the 
primary  definition  as  being  more  pertinent,  but  also  object  to 


5IO  The  Absolute  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

the  secondary  as  faulty,  as,  in  fact,  presenting  merely  "  two 
opposite  poles  of  the  conditioned,"  rather  than  two  distinct 
phases  of  the  unconditioned.  The  "  finished  "  and  the  "  unfin- 
ishable"  plainly  involve  some  material  image,  as  the  subject  of 
which  the  quasi  infinitude  and  absoluteness  are  to  be  predica- 
ted, and  if  admissible  in  our  conception  of  the  universe,  must 
obviously  be  excluded  from  that  of  Deity. 

Both  Hamilton  and  Mansel,  and  after  them  Spencer  and 
Fiske,  have  persistently  argued  that  thought  itself  is  finite, 
and  therefore  cannot  traverse  the  Infinite,  and  that  conscious- 
ness involves  the  relation  of  subject  and  object  and  therefore 
cannot,  without  contradicting  itself,  embrace  an  absolute  object 
out  of  relation  to  its  own  subjectivity.  But  such  logical  puz- 
zles do  not  occur  to  common  minds,  and  are  practically  refuted 
by  an  immense  number  of  philosophic  intellects  to  whom  they 
seem  little  more  than  a  mere  play  upon  words.  The. fact 
remains,  that,  in  conceiving  of  the  Infinite  and  the  Absolute, 
the  thinker  simply  includes  himself  in  the  totality  of  exist- 
ence, without  for  one  moment  imagining  that  he  stands  apart 
as  a  relative  subject  distinguished  from  an  absolute  object, 
still  less  as  a  creature  existing  independently  of  the  Creator. 
And  to  say  that  such  thought  is  impossible  or  absurd  would 
be  like  saying  that  one  could  not  conceive  of  the  house  he 
inhabits  without  going  outside  of  it. 

All  the  contradictions  which  have  been  alleged,  disappear 
the  moment  we  take  the  Absolute  to  mean  that  which  is 
absolved  from  any  necessary  relation  to  the  finite,  and  the 
Infinite  that  which  is  unlimited,  in  comparison  with  the  finite ; 
the  former  being  a  difference  in  kind,  and  the  latter  in  degree, 
between  the  human  and  the  divine  spirit  or  person.  The  two 
notions,  so  far  from  being  oppugnant,  will,  then  be  found 
complemental.  In  the  supporting  idea  of  personality  as  their 
ground  and  cement,  they  at  once  cohere  and  coalesce  to  form 
one  conception.  Though  our  thought  might  indeed  be 
bafifled  and  exhausted,  were  it  to  pursue  either  of  them  apart, 
yet  while  endeavoring  to  unite  them,  it  encounters  no  contra- 
diction between  them,  and  instead  of  withering  up  and  col- 
lapsing amid  blank  negations,  really  finds  itself  grasping  the 
most  complete  positives  within  its  reach.     The  Absolute  and 


CHAP.  III.]  Theory  of  Omniscience.  5 1 1 

the  Infinite  are,  in  fact,  but  divine  attributes  or  properties 
which  we  contemplate  in  another  Person,  as  the  contrasts  and 
correlates  of  our  own  human  dependence  and  finitude ;  and 
the  consistency  of  the  two  latter  ideas  is  not  more  obvious  in 
our  consciousness  of  self  than  is  the  consistency  of  the  two 
former  in  our  conception  of  God  as  an  objectiv-e  realit}\ 
We  simply  apprehend  ourselves  as  at  once  finite  and 
dependent,  and  then,  as  opposed  to  this,  affirm  in  thought 
the  possibility  of  Another  who  is  at  once  infinite  and  absolute. 
The  two  inconditionates,  when  thus  defined,  if  they  are  par- 
tially inconceivable  in  the  sense  of  surpassing  thought,  yet 
they  are,  at  least,  not  utterly  inconceivable  in  the  sense  of 
extinguishing  thought;  but  are  rather,  when  viewed  apart, 
like  asymptotical  lines,  which  can  neither  meet  nor  clash,  or, 
when  viewed  together,  like  concentric  circles,  whose  very 
perfection  precludes  their  conflict. 

In  like  manner,  it  might  be  shown  that  the  remaining 
notion  of  causality  only  adds  to  the  consistency  of  the  other 
two  notions,  when  they  are  rightly  adjusted  one  to  another. 
Although  an  origination  of  the  universe  by  an  Infinite  and 
Absolute  Person,  were  it  perversely  conceived  of  by  us  as 
necessary,  might,  indeed,  seem  to  violate  both  His  absolute- 
ness and  His  infinitude,  yet  when  it  is  conceived  as  wholly 
voluntary,  it  can  only,  in  our  view,  conserve  and  manifest 
them  both,  ensuring  not  less  the  dependence  of  creation  than 
the  independence  of  the  Creator.  In  attributing  personality 
to  God,  we  include  that  volition  from  which  we  have  our 
idea  of  causality,  and  associate  with  it,  in  contrast  with  our 
own  conditioned  will.  His  infinite  energy  and  absolute  pur- 
pose. 

Thus  the  three  ideas  really  demand  and  support  each  other; 
and  so  far  from  being  mere  "counter  imbecilities  of  the 
human  mind,"  are,  in  fact,  the  most  consistent  energies  of 
which  it  is  capable.  We  never  think  so  positively,  vigorously, 
and  coherently,  as  when  we  steadily  grasp  and  combine  them 
in  one  conception;  and  of  all  conceptions  that  we  can 
frame,  there  is  none  which  so  satisfies,  while  it  exhausts  the 
capacity  of  thought.  When  contemplating  an  Infinite  and 
Absolute  Creator    in   relief   from    His   finite    and  dependent 


512  The  Absolute  Philosophy.  [part  ir. 

creation,  our  ordinary  consciousness  is  released  and  ex- 
panded to  the  utmost  in  the  effort  to  apprehend  the  glo- 
rious object.  As  the  mariner,  sailing  out  from  land  into  the 
shoreless  ocean,  we  let  go  our  hold  upon  the  conditfoned, 
and  turn  away  to  confidently  affirm  against  it  the  uncon- 
ditioned, losing  even  ourselves  the  while  in  the  infinite,  the 
absolute  and  the  eternal.  It  may  then  be  said,  not  less  philo- 
sophically than  devotionally,  that  the  soul  is  forsaking  the 
things  of  time  and  sense  to  be  wholly  occupied  with  God, 
and,  like  an  eagle  basking  in  the  empyrean,  becomes  absorbed 
in  the  vision  of  ineffable  glory. 

It  has  now  become  apparent  how  the  supposed  contradic- 
tions have  arisen.  In  part  they  are  owing  to  a  perverse  habit 
of  treating  these  divine  attributes  as  mere  abstractions,  or 
predicating  them  of  some  vague  notional  substratum  of  the 
universe,  or  of  the  universe  itself,  rather  than  of  a  conscious 
spirit  or  person,  distinct  from  the  universe;  and  also,  to  a 
failure  in  distinguishing,  in  kind  as  well  as  degree,  the  divine 
person  from  the  human.  So  long  as  we  endeavor  to  con- 
ceive some  dead  substance,  or  blind  force,  or  bare  cause, 
matter,  space,  time,  the  universe,  in  short,  aught  but  a  per- 
sonal God,  as  infinite  and  absolute,  or  so  long  as  we  endeavor 
to  conceive  a  God  who  is  infinite  and  yet  not  absolute,  a  mere 
anvna  imtndi,  or  a  self-developing  world,  we  cannot  but 
involve  ourselves  in  absurdity,  for  the  simple  reason  that  we 
are  vainly  striving  to  merge  the  spiritual  in  the  material,  the 
unconditioned  in  the  conditioned,  the  Creator  in  the  created. 
But  so  soon  as  we  admit  the  idea  of  a  person  or  spirit  in  place 
of  a  mere  substance,  or  cause,  or  vague  being,  and  then  add 
the  further  ideas  of  a  personal  independence  in  contrast  with 
our  personal  dependence,  and  an  infinite  degree  of  all  personal 
attributes  in  contrast  with  the  finite  degree  in  which  we  pos- 
sess them;  at  once  the  whole  group  of  else  contradictory 
notions  resolves  itself  into  logical  unity,  and  we  have  before 
us  a  conception,  which,  beyond  all  others  possible  to  the 
human  mind,  will  stand  the  test  of  analysis.  The  revealed 
Jehovah  is,  in  fact,  identified  as  the  only  rational  Absolute, 
Infinite,  and  First  Cause;  and  we  can  pronounce  it  not  more 
sound  in  theology  than   in  philosophy,  to  conceive  "a  Spirit 


CHAP.  III.]  Theory  of  Omniscience.  513 

infinite,  eternal,  and    unchangeable,   in    His    being,    wisdom, 
power,  holiness,  justice,  goodness,  and  truth." 

Our  conclusion,  then,  is,  that  while  some  modes  of  conceiv- 
ing infinity,  absoluteness  and  causality,  may  be  contradictory, 
and  while  all  modes  of  conceiving  them  must  be  more  or  less 
defective,  yet  that  conception  in  which  they  are  brought 
together  as  attributes  of  a  Divine  Spirit  or  Person,  is  not  only 
a  positive  and  congruous  effort  of  thought,  but,  when  com- 
pared with  others,  is  the  most  logical  which  the  mind  of 
man  can  grasp. 

The  second  problem  relates  to  the  credibility  of  the  Abso- 
lute. Does  it  exist  really  as  well  as  ideally  ?  When  we  con- 
ceive it,  do  we  conceive  what  actually  exists  ?  Does  our  sub- 
jective idea  of  the  Infinite  find  support  in  any  objective  reali- 
ty ?  Is  the  Unconditioned  a  mere  magnificent  abstraction, 
projected  as  the  shadow  of  our  own  consciousness,  or  a  glo- 
rious Person  existing  outside  of  our  consciousness  ?  Can  we 
believe  in  such  an  Absolute  and  Infinite  Spirit  as  we  have 
conceived  ? 

This  question  is  also  fundamental  to  both  religion  and  sci- 
ence, and,  in  like  manner,  has  sometimes  received  a  negative 
answer  from  both  parties.  The  whole  religious  wing  of  the 
Kantian  school,  while  denying  the  credibility  of  the  Absolute, 
have  maintained  its  conceivability,  and  even  insisted  that  it 
becomes  an  object  of  thought  simply  because  it  must  cease  to 
be  an  object  of  faith  or  that  our  implicit  faith  in  it  as  an  ob- 
jective reality  expires  through  the  explicit  thought  of  it  as  a 
mere  subjective  idea,  generalized  from  the  finite  and  contin- 
gent. It  was  by  means  of  this  distinction  that  some  devout 
disciples  of  Fichte,  Schelling  and  Hegel,  were  fain  to  deify 
the  abstraction  of  universal  being,  to  worship  the  All-One 
as  God,  and  to  erect  a  kind  of  speculative  theology  upon  the 
ruins  of  all  practical  rehgion. 

Of  such  a  religious  system  it  would  be  enough  to  say  that 
it  cannot  accomplish  its  own  aim.  Whatever  other  purpose  it 
might  serve,  it  could  not  sustain  and  foster  the  sentiments  of 
religion.  The  adorable  must  at  least  be  the  credible.  We 
can  only  worship  what  we  believe  to  exist,  as  exterior  and 
3-P 


5 14  ^^^^  Absolute  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

superior  to  self;  and  if  the  Infinite  cannot  be  believed  to  exist, 
within  our  finite  self  or  in  finite  nature  around  us,  then  it  can 
only  be  worshipped,  if  worshipped  at  all,  as  an  extra-human 
and  extra-mundane  reality,  surpassing  both  man  and  nature, 
in  power,  wisdom  and  goodness.  When  any  pantheistic  ideal- 
ists are  found  consciously  loving  and  adoring  the  abstractions 
of  their  own  understandings,  we  may  accept  for  genuine  reli- 
gious feeling,  their  delusive  apprehension  of  an  Absolute 
Deity  produced  by  human  intelligence  alone  or  by  the  logical 
development  of  an  impersonal,  universal  Reason. 

Without  pursuing  this  argument,  however,  wc  pass  to  the 
more  consistent  Kantians,  who  would  not  only  ignore  the  Ab- 
solute as  an  objective  reality,  but  retain  the  subjective  notion 
or  idea  merely  as  a  necessary  postulate  of  philosophy,  and  so 
present  the  simple  alternatives  of  ideaHsm  or  realism  in  sci- 
ence and  atheism  or  theism  in  religion. 

To  any  but  a  thoroughly  artificial  mind  such  a  question 
might,  indeed,  in  its  very  statement,  seem  too  revolting  as  well 
as  absurd,  for  serious  discussion.  How  warped  the  intellect 
that  would  reduce  the  idea  of  God,  that  idea  which,  beyond 
all  others,  has  operated  upon  mankind  with  the  force  of  reali- 
ty, to  a  mere  abstraction  or  regulative  notion  !  And  how 
sophisticate  the  conscience  that  for  the  worship  of  such  a 
Being  would  substitute  mere  enthusiastic  love  of  nature,  or 
proud  apotheosis  of  self!  And  yet,  for  such  a  barren  crown  as 
this,  a  host  of  astute  dialecticians  have  entered  the  speculative 
arena,  and  striven  with  pitiless  logic,  in  the  face  of  reason, 
instinct,  and  common  sense.  Foremost  of  these  champions  of 
the  pure  idealism  came  Fichte,  annihilating  all  objective  reali- 
ty;  then  followed  Schelling,  annihilating  all  subjective  reality  ; 
at  length  appeared  Hegel,  annihilating  both  as  distinct  reali- 
ties, and  preserving  only  their  residual  relations ;  and  mean- 
while have  appeared  Shopenhauer,  Hartmann,  and  Bahnsen, 
undermining  all  these  systems  as  the  mere  human  conception 
of  a  universe  which  has  its  root  in  blind  force  and  its  flower  in 
conflicting  will  and  reason.  We  shall  best  rebut  such  per- 
verse disputings  by  simply  asserting  against  them  the  several 
grounds  of  that  catholic  realism  which  underlies  alike  all 
science  and  religion  as  the  only  rational  postulate  of  philosophy. 


CHAP.  III.]  Tlicory  of  Omniscience .  5^5 

In  the  first  place,  a  firm  basis  for  the  credibility  of  the 
Absolute  has  been  already  laid  in  our  doctrine  of  its  con- 
ceivability.  We  do  not  mean  that  it  is  of  necessity  credible, 
simply  because  it  is  conceivable,  but  onh-  that  its  conceiva- 
bility  is  an  indispensable  condition  of  its  credibility.  It  could 
not  be  believed  if  it  could  not  be  conceived.  Belief  in  it  in- 
volves no  obvious  or  latent  contradiction,  but  is  rather  a  be- 
lief, to  say  the  least,  the  contrary  of  which  cannot  be  proved. 

In  the  second  place,  it  takes  rank  as  an  instinctive  convic- 
tion or  primary  belief  Instead  of  resulting,  like  some 
convictions,  from  mere  speculation,  or  reasoning,  or  educa- 
tion, it  has  the  marks  of  spontaneity,  universality,  and 
necessity.  The  moment  the  Infinite  is  conceived,  it  is 
instinctively  apprehended  to  be  objectively  real.  As  in  the 
very  act  of  conceiving  an  external  world  all  unsophisticated 
minds  spontaneously  attribute  a  reality  to  it  from  which  they 
cannot  escape,  so  in  the  very  act  of  conceiving  a  god,  they 
spontaneously  attribute  to  it,  not  bare  reality  only,  but  per- 
sonality, that  form  of  reality  suggested  by  their  own 
consciousness,  and  the  most  substantial  of  which  we  can 
have  any  notion.  It  is  only  by  some  subtle  logic  that  either 
of  these  primitive  convictions  ever  becomes  dissipated.  The 
feeling  of  dependence  upon  an  exterior  and  superior  some- 
what, which  they  call  God,  distinct  alike  from  self  and  the 
world,  is  found  in  all  mankind,  and  may  be  classed  among 
the  normal  sentiments  of  the  race. 

In  the  third  place,  such  belief,  beyond  all  other  instinctive 
convictions,  proves  to  be  indestructible  and  cumulative.  The 
idol,  or  myth,  or  abstraction,  in  which  it  has  expressed  itself, 
may  be  destroyed,  but  it  will  still  survive,  and  through  some 
new  and  more  consistent  conception  of  the  great  Reality, 
feel  after  Him,  if  haply  it  may  find  Him.  Even  when  it  is 
brought  reflectively  into  distinct  consciousness  and  logically 
investigated,  it  not  only  asserts  itself  against  all  adverse 
reasoning,  but  admits  of  elucidation  and  ever-growing  proof 
Argument  after  argument  may  be  accumulated  to  show  that 
our  spontaneous  apprehension  of  God  as  a  real  existence  is 
no  illusion,  until  faith  shall  amount  to  assurance,  and  instinct 
be  exalted  into  knowledge. 


5i6  Tlic  Absolute  Pliilosophy.  [part  ii, 

.  In  short,  philosophically  speaking,  the  credibility  of  the 
Absolute,  as  of  all  objective  reality,  may  be  said  to  be  in 
exact  proportion  to  its  conceivability.  That  we  can  no 
longer  believe  in  the  pagan  or  classic  deities  as  the  true  and 
living  God  is  simply  because  we  can  no  longer  conceive  them 
as  such.  And  if  our  conception  of  an  Infinite  and  Absolute 
Creator  can  be  shown  to  be  absurd  or  self-contradictory,  then 
we  must  either  wholly  renounce  our  faith  in  such  a  being,  or 
we  must  seek  new  support  for  our  faith  in  some  conception 
which  we  can  affirm  to  be  sound  and  consistent,  as  well  as 
supported  by  a  correspondent  objective  reality.  We  are, 
however,  trenching  upon  our  next  topic. 

The  third  problem  relates  to  the  cognizability  of  the 
Absolute.  Does  our  subjective  idea  of  the  Infinite  corres- 
pond to  the  objective  reality?  In  so  far  as  we  can  conceive 
it,  do  we  conceive  it  as  it  really  exists  ?  Must  our  cognition 
of  deity  be  wholly  illusory,  like  the  vision  of  an  object  by  a 
distorting  eye  or  through  a  discolored  medium?  or  may  it 
become  clear  and  exact,  as  far  as  it  extends,  however  limited? 
Can  we  know  the  God  in  whom  we  believe? 

This  question,  too,  we  must  insist,  is  equally  momentous 
in  both  its  religious  and  scientific  bearings.  The  attempt  is 
indeed  made,  by  both  Kantians  and  Hamiltonians  of  the 
religious  side,  to  distinguish  between  a  speculative  and 
regulative  knowledge  of  the  Absolute,  or  between  its  cogniza- 
bility and  its  revealability,  and  while  denying  the  former  and 
retaining  the  latter,  to  erect  the  revealed  theology  on  the 
ruins  of  all  rational  theology.  It  is  argued  by  such  thinkers 
that,  as  the  Infinite  God  cannot  be  conceived,  but  must  be 
simply  believed,  He  is  therefore  of  necessity,  in  accommoda- 
tion to  our  faculties,  revealed  to  us  in  a  human  form,  under 
gross  finite  images,  and  that  this  revelation,  though  sufficient 
to  regulate  our  religious  worship  and  practice,  neither  itself 
amounts  to  a  true  knowledge,  nor  can  by  any  effort  of  reason 
be  made  to  yield  aught  toward  a  science  of  the  absolute. 

But  it  may  be  said  of  such,  as  of  all  indirection,  that  it 
creates  worse  difficulties  than  it  attempts  to  solve.  We  do 
not    speak    merely    of  the    intellectual    and    moral  duplicity 


CHAP.  III.]  Theory  of  Oinniscicnce.  517 

which  it  would  substitute  for  an  unsophisticated  faith  in  the 
inspired  representations,  but  also  of  its  fatal  bearing  upon  in- 
spiration itself  A  God  that  could  not  be  known,  could  not 
be  revealed,  for  the  simple  reason  that  the  revealing  process 
from  without  involves  the  cognitive  process  from  within,  or  is 
itself  but  the  making  known  to,  and  through,  the  human 
intellect,  what  would  else  be  unknown.  Surely  if,  like  the 
Samaritans,  we  "worship  we  know  not  what,"  or,  like  the 
Athenians,  we  worship  only  an  "unknown  God,"  then,  reve- 
lation has  become  to  us  either  useless  or  worse  than  useless. 
Our  ignorance,  in  so  far  as  it  is  unconscious,  is  little  better 
than  heathen  blindness ;  or,  in  so  far  as  it  is  conscious,  has 
nothing  to  boast  over  the  classic  idolatry.  Let  such  "too 
superstitious  "  Christians  receive  as  a  rebuke  what  the  Apostle 
to  the  Gentiles  first  uttered  as  a  gospel,  "Whom  ye  igno- 
rantly  worship,  him  I  declare  unto  you,"  and  learn  anew  that 
lesson  of  the  great  Teacher  to  those  who  had  corrupted  an 
existing  Scripture:  "We  know  what  we  worship:  God  is  a 
Spirit:  and  they  that  worship  him  must  worship  him  in 
spirit  and  in  truth." 

It  was  charged  by  Hamilton,  that  Kant  "  had  slain  the 
body,  but  had  not  exorcised  the  spectre  of  the  Absolute  ;  and 
this  spectre  has  continued  to  haunt  the  schools  of  Germany 
even  to  the  present  day."  But  it  may  now  be  charged  upon 
Hamilton  himself,  that  in  his  zeal  to  exorcise  the  spectre,  he 
has  but  mangled  the  body  of  the  Absolute,  and  left  the 
remains  of  philosophy  in  the  hands  of  infidels.  Between  the 
Hegelian  universe  of  bare  ideas  and  the  Comtean  universe  of 
dead  facts,  there  is,  in  sooth,  as  little  to  choose  as  between  a 
ghost  and  a  corpse.  We  shall  escape  both  horrors  only  when 
the  real  and  the  ideal  absolute  are  combined  in  Jehovah,  and 
science  as  well  as  religion  has  learned  to  recognize  a  living 
Creator,  inhabiting  and  controlling  His  whole  creation. 

The  more  consistent  disciples  of  the  agnostic  school,  in- 
stead of  attempting  any  vain  distinctions,  maintain  the  Abso- 
lute to  be  wholly  incognizable,  either  through  reason  or 
through  revelation,  for  the  purposes  of  philosophy  or  of  pict>^, 
and,  renouncing  all  efforts  to  apprehend  or  represent  the  un- 
known cause  of  the  universe,  follow  out  their  logic  to  the 


5i8  The  Absolute  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

extreme  of  a  thorough  nescience  and  neglect  of  the  Godhead. 
In  other  words,  while  admitting  the  possible  existence  of  the 
Infinite,  they  insist  that  it  can  neither  be  known  nor  wor- 
shipped, and  that  finite  phenomena  alone  can  become  the 
object  of  science  or  of  practice. 

By  far  the  most  logical  application  of  this  doctrine,  which 
the  world  has  yet  seen,  or  is  likely  to  see,  is  to  be  found  in 
the  positive  philosophy  and  religion  of  Comte.  In  that  sys- 
tem the  theory  of  the  Unknowable  is  driven  with  remorseless 
rigor  into  the  abyss  of  a  scientific  scepticism.  Not  only  is 
the  supposed  Creator  of  the  universe  ignored  as  incognizable, 
but  the  whole  existing  conception  of  such  a  being  is  ac- 
counted for  as  in  part  a  mere  personification,  and  in  part  a  mere 
hypothesis,  which  has  grown  out  of  the  historical  develop- 
ment of  religion  and  science,  and  which  originates  in  a  primi- 
tive tendency  of  mankind  to  conceive  external  realities  on  the 
conditions  or  in  the  light  of  their  own  consciousness,  under  a 
human  form,  as  animated  with  will  or  personality.  Already 
this  anthropomorphic  tendency  has  impelled  them  through 
the  successive  phases  of  fetichis.m,  polytheism,  and  mono- 
theism, and  the  myth  of  a  Jehovah  which  still  survives  in  the 
vulgar  mind,  will  only  have  become  obsolete,  when  a  perfected 
humanity,  through  science  and  art,  shall  have  learned  experi- 
mentally to  realize  its  own  ideal  of  power,  wisdom,  and  good- 
ness, instead  of  personifying  and  worshipping  it  as  a  Creator 
and  Preserver  of  the  universe,  or  identifying  it  with  the  un- 
known and  unknowable  Cause  of  phenomena. 

If  it  had  been  intended,  by  this  system,  to  ingeniously 
invert  every  axiom  and  instinct,  it  may  be  doubted  whether 
the  success  could  have  been  more  complete.  In  what  sound 
mind  has  the  notion  of  a  First  Cause  been  thus  resolved  into  a 
scientific  fiction  or  devout  self-personification  ?  And  how 
morbid  must  be  that  horror  of  blindly  worshipping  God  in 
the  form  of  man,  which  can  only  relieve  itself  by  knowingly 
worshipping  man  in  the  form  of  God  !  And  yet  to  compass 
these  results,  the  whole  field  of  knowledge  has  been  laid 
under  contribution,  and  the  march  of  history  toward  them 
clothed  with  the  precision  of  an  inflexible  law.  The  sciences, 
it  is  inductively  shown,  from  their  structure  and  development, 


CHAP.  III.]  Theory  of  Omniscience.  519 

are  destined  to  destroy  and  ignore  the  very  idea  of  Deity,  and 
in  its  place  to  substitute  that  of  humanity,  as  the  only  reality 
which  can  either  be  known  or  intelligently  worshipped.  Pre- 
posterous as  may  seem  such  conclusions,  we  cannot  escape 
them  unless  we  boldly  seize  and  sift  the  premises  from  which 
they  are  deduced. 

And  if  we  should  grant  that  the  Absolute  is  incomprehen- 
sible, it  would  not  follow  that  it  is  incognizable.  Our  know- 
ledge of  the  Infinite,  though  it  can  never  be  exhaustive  or 
complete,  may  still  be  real,  as  far  as  it  extends.  We  are  not 
reduced  to  the  bare  alternatives  of  omniscience  or  nescience. 
Although  unable  to  know  everything,  we  still  may  know 
something  in  respect  to  the  reality  we  call  God,  and  this 
knowledge,  however  limited,  may  be  a  positive  advance  beyond 
ignorance  or  error.  If  it  is  partial  and  liable  to  correction  or 
corruption,  so  also  is  all  other  knowledge.  The  same  reason- 
ing, indeed,  which  would  assail  the  former  must  assail  the 
latter,  and,  if  successful,  would  only  envelop  all  external 
reality  in  harrowing  uncertainty.  We  could  not  tell  whether 
the  veiled  Isis,  before  which  we  cowered,  were  spectre,  fiend, 
or  hollow  nothingness;  but  would  be  full  of 
"  Blank  misgivings  of  a  creature 
Moving  about  in  worlds  not  realized." 

Let  him  believe  who  can,  that  the  foundations  of  his  con- 
sciousness are  laid  in  delusion  and  imposture.  We  may  grant 
that  in  one  sense  we  must  ever  know  the  Infinite  as  still  pass- 
ing knowledge,  but  surely  we  need  not  on  that  account  de- 
spise or  renounce  what  knowledge  we  have. 

Neither  would  it  follow  that  the  Absolute  is  incognizable, 
if  we  should  admit  that  our  conception  thereof  is  in  some 
respects  human,  derived  from  our  own  personality,  or  how- 
soever derived,  found  analogous  to  that  personality.  We  may 
fearlessly  accept  the  imputation,  and  still  insist  that  the 
Incomprehensible  Reality  behind  all  phenomena  as  their 
ground  or  cause,  is  actually  what  we  conceive  it  to  be,  a  Spirit, 
having,  like  us,  spiritual  attributes,  but,  unlike  us,  having  them 
infinitely  and  absolutely.  What  if  it  be  true  that  we  are  con- 
stitutionally impelled  to  apprehend  and  represent  the  Original 
Cause  of  phenomena  as  an  intelligent  Creator,  and  ourselves 


520  TJie  Absolute  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

as  His  intelligent  creatures?  It  is  one  thing  to  say  that  we 
have  made  to  ourselves  a  god  in  the  image  of  man,  but  quite 
another  thing  to  say  that  we  have  ourselves  been  made  in  the 
image  of  God.  On  the  latter  supposition,  theism  becomes 
part  of  the  natural  realism  of  mankind,  and,  instead  of  being 
classed  with  outworn  superstitions,  may  be  taken  as  that  true 
knowledge  of  the  true  God,  of  which  all  pantheism,  poly- 
theism, and  the  grosser  monotheism,  are  but  counterfeits  and 
approximates. 

Thus  defined  and  guarded,  the  cognizability  of  the  Absolute 
may  be  maintained  by  several  considerations : 

And,  in  the  first  place,  still  resuming  and  carrying  forward 
our  previous  reasoning,  we  affirm  it  on  the  grounds  of  its  con- 
ceivability  and  credibility.  As  all  knowledge  proceeds  from 
the  thought,  through  the  faith  of  the  thing  apprehended,  and 
so  involves  both  thought  and  faith  as  its  preliminary  condi- 
tions, we  have  but  to  show,  as  has  been  done,  that  the  Infinite 
may  be  conceived  and  believed,  in  order  to  show  that  it  may 
also  be  known.  In  other  words,  the  impossibility  of  such 
knowledge  cannot  be  proved  without  first  proving  the  impos- 
sibility of  such  conception  and  belief,  or  without  assuming  a 
science  of  the  possibilities  lying  beyond  all  conception  and 
belief;  in  short,  without  assuming  omniscience  itself  He 
must  have  known  God  completely,  who  would  prove  that  we 
cannot  know  Him  partially,  or  that,  as  far  as  we  know  Him, 
we  do  not  know  Him  truly. 

The  advocates  of  the  so-called  relativity  of  knowledge  have 
quietly  assumed  what  they  cannot  prove,  that  our  finite  cogni- 
tion of  the  Infinite  Reality  called  God,  is  not  based  upon  a 
real  analogy.  By  their  own  showing,  they  cannot  go  behind 
phenomena  and  prove  the  contraiy.  For  anything  they 
know,  the  Original  Cause  of  the  universe  may  be  a  Divine 
person  to  whom  we  bear  an  approximate  likeness.  As  actually 
manifested  through  the  phenomenal  world,  the  Absolute  is 
recognized  as  at  least  possessed  of  intelligence,  like  our  own, 
though  infinitely  greater  in  degree.  Whoever  denies  this, 
can  only  be  characterized  as  an  atheist.  If  one  of  the  con- 
scious watches,  imagined  by  Mr.  Spencer,  should  declare  that 
the  watchmaker  did  not  even  have  brain  cnou<jh  to  make  a 


CHAP.  III.]  Theory  of  Omniscience.  521 

watch,  it  would  deserve  all  the  vituperation  which  any  other 
more  sensible  watches  could  heap  upon  it. 

In  the  second  place,  such  cognition  has  the  certitude  apper- 
taining to  other  cognition.  We  may  know  God,  at  least  as 
certainly  as  we  know  the.  world.  We  may  know  that  we 
know  Him.  As  we  cannot  suppose  that  external  realities  in 
general  are  positively  misrepresented  to  us  in  the  process  of 
our  own  intelligence,  without  thereby  supposing  that  our 
whole  nature  is  rooted  in  falsehood,  and  all  knowledge  mere 
delusion,  still  less  can  we  suppose  that  the  intimate  and  homo- 
geneous reality  of  God  is  so  misrepresented  to  us,  since  that 
would  impugn  the  veracity  of  consciousness  where  its  tes- 
timony is  most  direct,  explicit  and  essential.  In  such  know- 
ledge we  are  in  fact  in  immediate  contact  with  an  Infinite 
Spirit,  from  whom  our  finite  spirits  cannot  escape,  whitherso- 
ever they  may  flee  ;  while. in  all  ordinary  knowledge  we  are 
cognizing  existences  indefinitely  extended  away  from  us  in 
space  and  time,  and  presented  to  us  under  endless  variety  and 
vicissitude.  Surely  if  directness,  simplicity,  and  purity,  in 
our  apprehension  of  reality,  be  marks  of  true  cognition,  we 
may  rely  upon  what  we  can  know  of  God,  however  little  it  be. 
We  say  nothing  as  yet  of  the  veracity  of  revelation  as  com^ 
bined  with  the  veracity  of  consciousness  in  affording  a  still 
farther  and  peculiar  ground  of  certitude ;  nor  of  a  subjective 
illumination  as  ensuring,  in  connection  with  that  objective 
revelation,  the  ecstatic  vision  of  the  Absolute. 

In  the  third  place,  such  cognition  imparts  oneness  and  con- 
sistency to  all  other  cognition.  We  cannot  know  the  world 
as  a  whole,  unless  we  know  somewhat  of  God.  An  Infinite 
and  Absolute  Person,  whose  intelligent  will  is  expressed 
through  the  laws  of  all  phenomena  as  their  first  and  final 
cause,  is  a  fundamental,  necessary  postulate  of  science,  without 
which  it  would  remain  a  mere  mass  of  fragmentary  know- 
ledge, devoid  of  rational  coherence  and  unity.  As  the  uni- 
verse, the  totality  of  existence,  acquires  intelligibility,  becomes 
a  cosmos  instead  of  a  chaos,  only  when  it  is  viewed  as  the 
creation  of  a  Creator,  so  the  sciences  can  only  be  resolved 
into  a  system  by  means  of  theology.  The  law  of  their  devel- 
opment is  precisely  the  reverse  of  that  maintained  by  the 
3-Q 


522  TJie  Absolute  Pliilosopliy.  [part  ii. 

Comteans,  as  might  be  shown,  both  from  their  structure,  and 
from  their  history. 

In  fine,  the  cognizabihty  of  the  Absolute,  hke  that  of  all 
other  reality,  is  proportioned  as  well  as  conditioned  -by  its 
conceivability  and  credibility.  Only  when  we  shall  have  lost 
all  thought  and  faith  can  we  also  lose  all  knowledge  of  God. 
Though  our  conception  of  Him  must  indeed  be  human,  and 
our  belief  in  Him  mainly  spontaneous,  yet  both  these  are 
themselves  a  spiritual  endowment  and  heritage,  which  may  be 
either  wasted  or  improved.  They  are,  in  fact,  but  the  image 
of  the  Creator  constitutionally  impressed  upon  His  creature. 
As  the  boundless  cope  is  mirrored  in  a  dew-drop,  so  does 
man  reflect  even  Deity  in  miniature ;  and  according  as  he 
becomes  conscious  of  that  finite  similitude,  may  he  become 
cognizant  of  the  Infinite  Original.  He  may  indeed  have  lost 
the  likeness,  and  with  it  the  knowledge  of  God  in  idolatrous 
superstition  ;  he  may  even  have  obliterated  both  by  sophisti- 
cal philosophy  or  moral  debasement;  but  he  may  also  be 
"renewed  in  knowledge  after  the  image  of  Him  that  created 
him." 

Let  us  not,  however,  forestall  our  remaining  discussion. 
We  have  maintained  that  a  science  of  the  infinite  is  as  feasible 
as  a  science  of  the  finite,  and  that,  in  fact,  the  former  is 
indispensable  to  the  latter.  But  there  is  this  important  differ- 
ence between  them  : — Whereas,  in  our  cognition  of  the  eter- 
nal world,  the  subject  is  cognitive  while  the  object  is  simply 
cognizable,  yet  in  our  cognition  of  God,  both  subject  and 
object,  the  finite  spirit  and  the  Infinite  Spirit,  are  interchange- 
ably cognizable  and  cognitive.  According  to  the  strict  abso- 
lutists, the  finite  spirit  may  even  become  identical  with  the 
Infinite  Spirit,  and  theology  be  actually  absorbed  in  psy- 
chology. According  to  the  strict  conditionists  or  positivists, 
the  two  are  heterogeneous,  and  theology  must  therefore  be 
isolated  from  psychology,  and  abandoned  as  a  region  of  pure 
faith  or  mere  conjecture.  Between  these  extremes  lies  the 
true  doctrine,  that  the  finite  spirit  and  the  Infinite  Spirit, 
although  distinct  and  unequal,  are  nevertheless  homogeneous 
and  inter-cognitive,  and  consequently  that  psychology  and  the- 
ology   are    concentric,  and   ideally    or    ultimately  coincident 


CHAP.  III.]  Theory  of  Omniscience.  523 

spheres  of  knowledge  and  faith,  reason  and  revelation,  science 
and  omniscience.  In  other  words,  our  knowledge  of  the 
Creator,  in  distinction  from  our  knowledge  of  the  creation,  is 
such  as  one  person  may  have  of  another  person  through  a 
process  of  mutual  intelligence  or  recognition.  We  sustain 
personal  relations  to  an  Absolute  mind,  who  is  Himself  cogni- 
zant as  well  as  cognizable,  and  whom,  though,  now  we  know 
only  in  part,  we  shall  yet  know  even  as  also  we  are  known. 

This  distinction  brings  us  to  the  verge  of  the  next  general 
topic  propounded,  and  by  means  of  it  we  now  emerge  upon 
ground  more  open  and  familiar  than  that  over  which  we  have 
been  groping. 

Our  fourth  problem  relates  to  the  revealability  of  the  Abso- 
lute. Can  such  a  Spirit  make  himself  known  to  us,  as  well 
as  be  known  by  us  ?  May  the  Infi.iite  mind  disclose  itself  to 
the  finite  mind  ?  Must  all  our  knowledge  of  Deity  be  derived 
from  our  subjective  reason  ?  or  may  it  be  purged  and  extended 
by  an  objective  revelation  ?  Has  the  "  unknown  God  "  been 
made  known  ? 

In  reference  to  this  question,  the  attempt  has  been  made 
to  disjoin  the  sphere  of  science  from  that  of  religion.  One 
religious  division  of  Hegelians,  though  nominally  adhering  to 
the  revealed  Jehovah,  still  pursued  the  rational  Absolute  inde- 
pendently, with  more  or  less  rigor,  whithersoever  their  logic 
would  take  them,  and  some  even  maintained  that  the  former 
is  only  to  be  retained  as  a  kind  of  exoteric  and  mythical  deity 
of  the  vulgar,  while  the  latter  alone  is  that  pure  reality 
discerned  by  the  privileged  circle  of  philosophers.  It  was 
with  such  subtle  ambiguity  that  the  most  familiar  dogmas  of 
Christianity  were  held  as  philosophic  formulas.  The  trinity 
of  Father,  Son,  and  Spirit,  became  travestied  under  the 
triplicity  of  the  dialectic  process ;  the  incarnation  was  viewed 
as  the  reason  embodied  in  all  mankind,  though  best  exempli- 
fied in  the  individual  Christ ;  and  the  atonement  as  the  recon- 
ciliation of  this  finite  reason  with  the  Infinite  Reason. 

Of  this  covert  rationalism  it  is  enough  to  say,  that  it  is  fatal 
to  the  interest  it  pretends  to  preserve,  and  all  the  more 
mischievous  because  of  its  orthodox  disguise.     In  connection 


524  The  Absolute  PJdlosopJiy.  [part  ir. 

with  such  a  thoroughly  rational  theology,  there  could  not  be 
any  strictly  revealed  theology.  If  the  God  of  Scripture  is  to 
be  taken  as  a  mere  symbol,  or  witness,  or  harbinger  of  the 
God  of  pliilosophy,  all  revelation,  in  any  proper  sense  of  the 
term,  is  undermined.  For  how  could  the  revealable  be  at  the 
same  time  the  discoverable  ?  or  that  which  might  have  been 
positively  concealed  by  the  Infinite  Mind  be  disclosed  by  the 
finite  mind  ?  "  Who  hath  known  the  mind  of  the  Lord  ? 
or  who  hath  been  His  counsellor?"  It  was  this  impious 
attempt  to  prejudge,  on  grounds  of  mere  reason,  the  content 
of  revelation,  which  gave  to  Germany  a  piety  professing  the 
form  of  godliness,  but  denying  the  power  thereof,  and  multi- 
plied in  her  churches  the  false  apostles  of  another  gospel, 
which  is  not  another. 

And  hence  we  must  regard  as  by  far  the  most  consistent 
rationalists  those  who  avow  hostility  to  evangelical  truth,  and 
boldly  proffer  their  philosophical  atheism  or  pantheism  in 
place  of  the  biblical  theism.  What  was  it,  indeed,  but  the 
logical  issue  of  pure  rationalism  which  Christendom  beheld, 
when  the  whole  historical  as  well  as  doctruial  system  of 
Scripture  was  assailed  by  the  criticism  of  Strauss,  and  its 
Jehovah  exhibited  as  but  a  Hebrew  Jove,  its  Jesus  as  but  a 
Jewish  Socrates,  and  even  its  gospel  as  only  a  Christian 
legend.  Malicious  as  the  caricature  seemed,  yet  it  had  at  least 
the  merit  of  candor,  and  exposed  the  seeming  angel  of  light 
in  the  naked  deformity  of  sin.  Christianity  is  but  betrayed 
with  an  Iscariot  kiss  by  a  philosophy  which  couches  infidel 
sentiment  in  Scripture  phrases  and  ancient  formulas ;  but 
when  the  issue  is  boldly  made  between  a  god  of  reason  and  a 
god  of  revelation,  then  we  know  where  and  how  to  meet  it. 

And,  in  the  first  place,  that  the  Absolute  is  revealable 
ensues  upon  our  whole  previous  argument.  If  it  could  not 
be  known,  and  known  as  a  person  or  spirit,  it  could  not  be 
revealed,  but  since  the  Reality  is  both  cognizable  and  cogni- 
tive, a  positive  and  objective  revelation  is  not  impossible. 
Only  upon  the  assumption  that  the  unknown  God  is  Himself 
unknowing  or  unknowable,  can  it  be  argued  that  it  is  impos- 
sible cither  that  He  should  be  made  known,  or  should  make 
Himself  known. 


CHAP.  III.]  Theory  of  Omniscience.  525 

In  the  second  place,  there  is  in  human  reason  a  necessity 
for  such  a  divine  revelation.  We  do  not  mean  that  all 
rational  theology  is  impossible  or  nugatory,  but  simply  that 
it  must  be  imperfect  and  erroneous  until  corrected  and  ma- 
tured by  revealed  theology.  This  maybe  proved:  ist.  By 
the  nature  of  those  problems  with  which  any  theology, 
whether  rational  or  revealed,  must  deal,  but  which  mere  rea- 
son itself  cannot  solve ;  such  as  the  character,  constitution, 
and  policy  of  the  Creator ;  the  origin  and  object  of  the  crea- 
tion ;  and  the  relations  and  destiny  of  the  creature.  2d.  By 
the  history  of  rational  religion,  which  abounds  in  idol  and 
mythical  deities,  in  fabulous  cosmogonies,  and  in  the  crudest 
notions  of  futurity.  3d.  By  the  history  of  rational  philosophy, 
which,  whenever  it  has  cast  off  the  guidance  of  revelation,  has 
groped  into  the  darkness  of  atheism,  pantheism,  fatalism. 
scepticism,  and  nihilism. 

In  the  third  place  there  is  in  human  reason  a  capacity  for 
such  a  divine  revelation.  All  rational  theology  craves  a  re- 
vealed theology,  as  its  legitimate  sequel  and  complement. 
This  may  be  proved  :  ist  By  the  adaptation  of  the  finite  mind 
to  an  Infinite  mind,  and  its  susceptibility  to  education  through 
an  objective  revelation  distinct  from  that  made  in  nature  and 
providence.  2d.  By  the  universal  reminiscence  or  presenti- 
ment of  a  revelation,  which  is  expressed  in  all  heathenism  ; 
and,  3d.  By  the  germs  or  rudiments  of  such  a  revelation,  in 
which  all  rational  philosophy  and  natural  religion  abound. 

In  the  fourth  place,  that  divine  revelation  which  has  been 
given  meets  both  the  necessity  and  the  capacity  of  human 
reason.  This  maybe  shpwn:  ist.  From  its  form,  which, 
having  been  progressive,  scriptural,  and  miraculous,  is  suited 
to  the  rational  constitution  of  mankind.  2d.  From  its  con- 
tents, which  not  only  elucidate  and  confirm  whatsoever  is 
sound  in  rational  religion,  but,  in  consistency  therewith,  con- 
tribute a  complementary  system  of  doctrine  bringing  a  peculiar 
self-evidence  of  its  own;  and,  3d.  From  its  effects,  which  have 
ever  been  to  correct,  stimulate,  and  mature  all  rational  phi- 
losophy. 

In  a  word,  we  may  conclude  that  there  can  be  no  truly 
rational  theology  without  a  revealed  theology  as  its  counter- 


526  The  Absolute  Philosophy.  [part  11. 

part  and  supplement.  Until  God  makes  Himself  known  to 
us  by  some  objective  revelation,  in  some  apocalypse  more 
direct  and  personal  than  His  mere  creation  and  providence, 
our  knowledge  of  Him  must  remain  partial  and  erroiieous; 
while  the  actual  addition  to  that  knowledge  by  means  of  such 
divine  communication  has  ever  only  had  the  effect  of  impart- 
ing to  it  greater  unity,  precision,  and  completeness.  The 
Jehovah  of  Holy  Scripture  is  in  fact  that  sole  Reality  whereof 
all  mythical  and  ideal  deities  are  but  harbingers  and  witnesses. 
As  in  Him  the  unknown  God  of  heathenism  is  made  known, 
and  need  no  longer  be  ignorantly  worshipped,  so  also  in  Him 
may  the  highest  abstractions  of  philosophy,  the  Infinite,  the 
Absolute,  the  First  Cause,  find  rational  support  and  consis- 
tency, and  become  objects  of  adoration  no  less  than  of  science. 
Such  is  the  act  of  the  Infinite  Mind  in  its  recognition  of  the 
finite  mind,  an  act  of  revelation ;  but  if  we  now  inquire  what 
must  be  the  correspondent  act  of  the  finite  mind  in  its  recog- 
nition of  the  Infinite  Mind  thus  revealed,  or  how  the  two  are 
related  on  the  ground  of  such  mutual  intelligence  and  inter- 
communication, we  broach  the  next  and  last  of  the  subjects  to 
be  considered. 

Our  fifth  problem  relates  to  the  demonstrability  of  the 
Absolute.  Can  it  be  proved  to  be  what  it  is  revealed  to  be  ? 
May  the  God  of  Scripture  be  identified  with  the  God  of 
reason  or  of  nature?  or  are  the  two  irreconcilable?  Must 
our  revealed  knowledge  ever  remain  singular  and  separate? 
or  may  it  be  logically  combined  with  our  rational  knowledge  ? 
Are  the  evidences  of  revelation  only,  or  are  also  its  contents, 
a  proper  subject  of  inquiry? 

In  reference  to  this  question,  a  remarkable  attempt  has 
lately  been  made  to  unite  science  and  religion  upon  a  common 
ground  of  pure  antilogy.  The  Hamiltonian  divines,  under 
the  leadership  of  Mansel,  maintain  that  both  the  revealed 
Jehovah  and  the  rational  Absolute,  when  logically  investi- 
gated, are  found  to  be  equally  self-contradictory,  and,  in  fact, 
that  the  Reality  which  they  suggest  and  prefigure  can  neither 
be  revealed  nor  demonstrated,  but  can  only  be  represented 
and  believed.    It  is  even  argued  by  this  thinker  that  the  main 


CHAP.  III.]  Theory  of  Omniscience.  527 

function  of  reason  is  to  demonstrate  the  Godhead  to  be 
undemonstrable,  and  the  only  effect  of  revelation  is  to  reveal 
it  to  be  unrevealable.  The  so-called  anthropomorphism  and 
anthropopathy  of  Scripture  are  accepted  as  not  peculiar  to 
Christianity,  but  inherent  in  the  very  constitution  of  the 
human  mind;  and  the  doctrines  of  the  trinity,  the  incarnation, 
and  the  atonement,  if  viewed  as  matter  of  faith,  are  held  as 
sufficiently  accurate  to  guide  our  worship  and  practice,  but 
if  viewed  as  matter  of  science,  are  no  better  than  a  sort  of 
didactic  representation,  or  divine  epic,  wherein  the  Father, 
Son,  and  Spirit  appear  as  dratnatis  personcB,  and  perform  the 
tragedy  of  Calvary  on  the  scene  of  human  history. 

Of  this  refined  dogmatism,  what  can  we  say,  but  that,  like 
the  covert  rationalism  before  noticed,  it  jeopards  the  interest 
it  would  protect,  and  is  only  the  more  pernicious  because 
of  its  pious  intent.  For  if  reason  and  revelation  combined 
can  yield  us  no  real  knowledge  of  God,  or  if  it  is  the  office 
of  the  latter  to  practice  illusions  which  it  is  the  office  of  the 
former  to  expose,  in  what  respect  are  we  better  than  the 
heathen  or  the  sceptic?  How  much  would  there  be  to  choose 
between  such  a  dramatic  Jehovah  and  the  mythical  Jupiter? 
Why  not  accept  both  as  mere  phases  of  a  popular  theology, 
which  the  learned  are  to  outgrow  and  gracefully  patronize  ? 
It  is  this  specious  effort  to  exalt  reason  by  dragging  revela- 
tion to  its  level,  which  has  already  in  many  an  orthodox 
communion,  led  to  a  mere  show  of  wisdom  in  will-worship 
and  humility,  and  as  it  extends  among  the  people,  can  have 
no  other  effect  than  to  corrupt  their  minds  from  the  simplicity 
that  is  in  Christ. 

And  hence  we  regard  as  by  far  the  most  consistent  dog- 
matists, those  who  frankly  admit  their  hostility  to  rational 
research,  and  intrepidly  press  their  biblical  creed  in  the  face 
of  all  human  science.  We  are  only  amused  now  at  the 
sturdy  dogmatism  which  once  repudiated,  on  Scripture 
grounds,  the  rotundity  and  motion  of  the  earth;  but  it  was 
at  least  honest  and  consistent,  and  drew  the  lines  sharply 
between  orthodoxy  and  heterodoxy.  That  were  but  a  soriy 
cham.pionship  of  Christianity  which  would  desperately  end 
the  battle    with    infidelij:y  by  springing  a  mine  of  common 


528  The  Absohtte  Philosophy.  [part  ir. 

absurdity  under  both  combatants.  But  let  the  question 
simply  be,  whether  the  rational  Absolute  and  the  revealed 
Jehovah  are  reconcilable  pr  irreconcilable,  and  then  we  can 
proceed  intelligently. 

And,  in  the  first  place,  that  the  Absolute  may  be  demon- 
strated, we  maintain  on  the  ground  that  it  has  been  revealed. 
If  it  had  been  actually  concealed  fi-om  us,  it  could  not,  of 
course,  be  rationally  investigated;  but  having  been  intelligibly 
disclosed  to  us,  it  may  be  brought  within  the  purview  of 
reason,  to  be  either  accepted  or  rejected,  proved  or  disproved, 
held  in  opposition  to  other  truths  and  facts  or  established  in 
consistency  therewith. 

In  the  second  place,  there  is  in  divine  revelation  a  necessity 
for  such  a  human  demonstration.  We  do  not  mean  that 
reason  is  either  prior  or  superior  to  revelation,  but  simply 
that,  although  inferior  and  supplementary,  it  is  nevertheless 
indispensable.  This  will  appear:  ist.  From  the  origin  of 
revelation  as  a  direct  emanation  from  the  infinite  reason  of 
God;  2d.  From  the  aim  of  revelation  as  a  direct  communica- 
tion to  the  finite  reason  of  man ;  3d.  From  the  purport  of  this 
communication  as  conveying  new  truth,  which  must,  sooner  or 
later,  in  greater  or  less  degree,  be  found  rationally  consistent 
with  the  old. 

In  the  third  place,  there  is  in  divine  revelation  a  fitness  for 
such  human  demonstration.  On  examination  it  is  found  to 
be  susceptible  of  rational  investigation  and  vindication.  This 
appears:  ist.  From  its  actual  evidences,  which,  unlike  those 
of  false  revelations,  satisfy  the  demands  of  reason ;  2d.  From 
its  actual  contents,  which  present  problems  upon  which  reason 
cannot  but  be  exercised;  3d.  From  its  actual  structure, 
which,  as  a  mere  fragmentary  composition  of  facts,  truths, 
and  principles,  devolves  upon  reason  the  task  of  their  logical 
organization  into  a  system. 

In  the  fourth  place,  such  a  human  demonstration  is  already 
in  progress.  The  reconciliation  of  revealed  and  rational 
knowledge  is  now  going  forward,  wherever  the  two  are  thrown 
into  combination.  It  maybe  discerned:  1st.  In  all  apolo- 
getic, exegctical,  and  systematic  theology,  which  are  respec- 
tively but  so  many  attempts  to  demonstrate  the    evidences. 


CHAP.  111. J  Theory  of  Omniscience.  529 

import,  and  harmony  of  revelation;  2d.  In  all  rational  the- 
ology* which,  whenever  pursued  independently,  though 
reverently,  has  but  served  to  develop  and  elucidate  problems 
propounded  by  revelation;  3d.  In  all  the  other  rational 
sciences,  which,  whether  physical  or  metaphysical,  by  their 
own  normal  procession  in  human  history,  are  but  logically 
unfolding  the  attributes  of  the  revealed  Jehovah,  and  demon- 
strating Him  to  be  the  only  rational  Absolute. 

In  a  word,  we  may  conclude  that  as  there  can  be  no  rational 
theology  without  a  revealed  theology,  so  there  can  be  no 
revealed  theology  without  a  rational  theology.  The  two 
complement  and  support  each  other,  and  are  both  normally 
and  ultimately  coincident.  They,  in  fact,  present  the  same 
Reality;  the  one  under  a  theoretical,  and  the  other  under  a  prac- 
tical aspect ;  the  one  as  an  object  of  science,  and  the  other  as 
a  subject  of  revelation  ;  and  neither  could  be  disjoined  without 
detriment  to  both.  If,  on  the  one  hand,  the  rational  Abso- 
lute can  only  be  found  in  the  revealed  Jehovah,  yet,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  revealed  Jehovah  can  only  be  demonstrated 
by  means  of  the  rational  Absolute.  Destroy  reason,  and  there 
can  be  no  revealed  theology;  destroy  revelation,  and  there 
can  be  no  rational  theology ;  retain  both  as  logically  irrecon- 
cilable, and  we  must  choose  which  theology  to  maintain 
against  the  other ;  but  retain  both  as  logically  reconcilable, 
and  then  both  theologies  become  like  intersecting  spheres, 
which  cannot  but  ultimately  coincide,  or  like  opposite  mem- 
bers of  an  arc,  which  must  meet  in  a  common  support  or 
mingle  in  a  common  union. 

And  the  respective  systems  of  science  which  are  founded 
upon  the  two  theologies  must,  likewise,  stand  or  fall  together. 
If,  on  the  one  hand,  our  physics  and  ethics  are  demonstrating 
the  divine  attributes,  both  natural  and  moral ;  yet,  on  the 
other  hand,  those  divine  attributes  afford  the  only  scientific 
basis  of  our  physics  and  ethics.  Moreover,  while  the  rational 
division  of  the  sciences,  both  physical  and  psychical,  thus 
logically  requires  the  support  of  the  revealed  theology ;  yet, 
at  the  same  time,  the  revealed  division  of  the  same  series  of 
sciences  as  logically  requires  the  support  of  a  rational  the- 
ology.    The  two  branch  divisions  are  not  less  the  counter- 

3-R 


530  The  Absolute  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

part  of  each  other  than  are  the  two  radical  factors  of  reason 
and  revelation  whence  they  have  proceeded.  Nor  are  they 
Isss  vitally  connected  in  their  practical  issues.  Detached  from 
the  revealed  Jehovah,  the  rational  sciences,  as  they  theoreti- 
cally involve  atheism  or  pantheism,  must  tend  to  irreligion  or 
idolatry;  detached  from  the  rational  Absolute,  the  revealed 
sciences,  as  they  theoretically  involve  dogmatism  and  bigotry, 
must  tend  to  superstition  and  barbarism  ;  but  let  the  two  be 
united  and  pursued  together,  and  neither  can  fly  into  an 
extreme.  We  then  have,  in  the  ideal  or  ultimate  reconcilia- 
tion of  rational  with  revealed  science,  the  ideal  or  ultimate 
reconciliation  of  Christianity  with  civilization.  Philosophy  is 
married  to  religion,  art  to  worship,  and  earth  to  heaven. 

Thus  what  we  have  been  taught  respecting  God  in  Scripture 
by  our  creed,  we  find  proved  in  nature  by  our  science.  And 
whether  we  say,  in  philosophical  phrase,  that  the  Infinite  Will 
{causa  causaruni)  proceeds  logically  towards  the  Infinite  Rea- 
son {ratio  rationum)  through  those  successive  mechanical, 
chemical,  organical,  ethical,  political,  and  religious  forces  in 
which  it  is  rationally  exerted  through  immensity  and  eternity ; 
or  whether  we  say,  in  theological  phrase,  that  the  "  Spirit,  in- 
finite, eternal,  and  unchangeable  in  His  being,  wisdom,  power, 
holiness,  justice,  goodness,  and  truth,"  hath  decreed,  "  accord- 
ing to  the  council  of  His  will,  for  His  own  glory,  whatsoever 
comes  to  pass  ;"  or  whether  we  say,  in  Scripture  phrase,  that 
Jehovah  is  "  the  Alpha  and  the  Omega,  the  First  and  the  Last, 
the  beginning  and  the  end,  which  was,  and  which  is,  and 
which  is  to  come,  the  Almighty ;  "  in  either  case,  we  are  but 
apprehending  the  same  intelligible  and  adorable  Reality. 

Let  heathen  philosophy  proclaim  the  Godhead  unknown, 
and  inscribe  upon  its  fanes  the  fitting  motto  of  such  a  deity: 

"  I  am  all  that  was,  and  is,  and  shall  be  ; 
Nor  my  veil,  has  it  been  withdrawn  by  mortal ;" 

but  for  the  Christian  philosopher  to  avow  that  "  the  last  and 
highest  consecration  of  all  true  religion  must  be  an  altar, — 
'  To  the  unknown  and  unknowable  God,' "  is  to  forget  that  the 
times  of  such  ignorance  are  now  passed,  that  the  veil  of  Isis 
has  been  rent,  for  all  that  will   reverently  gaze,  and  that  only 


CHAP.  III.]  Theory  of  Omniscience.  53 1 

by  ever  knowing  the   ever  knowable    God  do  we  have  life 
eternal. 

We  have  thus  reached,  as  our  general  conclusion,  a  modi- 
fied affirmative  to  the  whole  series  of  questions  propounded. 
As  we  passed  from  one  to  the  other,  we  have  striven  for  a 
firm  foothold  at  each  step  by  carefully  avoiding  the  quagmire 
on  either  side.  Considering  the  Absolute  as  an  object  of 
thought,  we  have  admitted  that  our  conception  of  it  must  be 
partial,  while  we  have  maintained  that  it  may  at  least  be  consist- 
ent. Considering  it  as  an  object  of  faith,  we  have  admitted 
that  our  belief  in  it  is  instinctive,  while  we  have  maintained 
that  it  involves  no  latent  absurdity.  Considering  it  as  an 
object  of  knowledge,  we  have  admitted  that  our  cognition  oi 
it  is  imperfect,  while  we  have  maintained  that  it  is  nevertheless 
certain.  Considering  it  as  a  reality  to  be  revealed,  we  have 
admitted  that  a  rational  theology  is  posssible,  while  we  have 
maintained  that  a  revealed  theology  is  its  indispensable  com- 
plement. Considering  it  as  a  reality  to  be  demonstrated,  we 
have  admitted  that  the  revealed  theology  is  necessary,  while 
we  have  maintained  that  a  rational  theology  is  its  indispen- 
sable supplement.  And  by  means  of  such  distinctions  we 
have  escaped  the  corresponding  extremes  of  atheism  and  pan- 
theism, scepticism  and  mysticism,  nescience  and  omniscience, 
naturalism  and  paganism,  rationalism  and  dogmatism  ;  at  the 
same  time  that  we  have  combined  into  one  connected  argu- 
ment the  several  truths  thus  sifted  from  each  discussion. 
Were  such  an  arrangement  and  treatment  of  these  difficult 
questions  more  generally  observed,  we  cannot  but  think  that 
much  of  the  controversy  now  waged  about  them  would  dis- 
appear. 

As  a  fit  practical  conclusion  of  the  whole  argument,  we 
may  now  notice  the  absolute  need  of  a  divine,  super-rational 
revelation  for  the  guidance  and  completion  of  philosophy. 
Apart  from  the  momentous  moral  uses  of  such  a  revelation, 
(of  which  we  do  not  here  speak),  if  we  consider  it  merely  in 
an  intellectual  light,  we  must  claim  it  to  be  indispensable  to 
the  formation  of  a  theory  and  system  of  perfect  knowledge. 
The  experiment  of  doing  without  it  has  been  tried  on  the 
largest  possible  scale.     We  have  found  different  thinkers,  of 


532  The  Absolute  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

different  schools,  in  different  nations,  contributing  to  a  move- 
ment which  has  grown  and  spread  for  half  a  century,  until 
now  it  involves  the  most  vital  interests  of  humanity.  At  its 
origin,  lik-e  a  mountain  rivulet  which  a  pebble  might  so' divide 
that  it  shall  afterwards  flood  opposite  valleys,  the  question 
presented  seems  almost  too  simple  and  harmless  for  grave 
discussion :  Shall  the  Absolute  be  held  as  a  subjective  idea 
or  as  an  objective  reality?  Idealistic  Germany  has  pursued 
the  former ;  realistic  England  has  pursued  the  latter ;  while 
versatile  France  has  seemed  to  vibrate  from  the  one  to  the 
other.  And  now  what  is  the  result  before  us  ?  The  two 
philosophical  tendencies,  thus  starting  in  opposite  directions, 
have  reached  their  utmost  limits  only  to  disclose  a  vast  intel- 
lectual void  between  them,  which,  if  filled  at  all,  must  be  filled 
by  a  divine  revelation. 

At  the  one  extreme,  we  behold  a  Positivism  which  would 
simply  extinguish  philosophy  in  sheer  nescience.  It  would 
not  only  contract  the  scope  of  philosophy,  but  make  its  very 
aim  fatuitous.  As  begun  by  Hobbes,  Hume  and  Comte,  it 
quietly  ignored  all  the  metaphysical  sciences.  As  pursued 
by  Spencer,  Lewes,  and  Fiske,  it  has  combined  the  remaining 
empirical  sciences  in  a  sort  of  hypothetical  cosmology,  held 
together  by  a  supposed  law  of  universal  evolution.  And 
then,  instead  of  supporting  such  a  cosmic  theory  with  that 
revealed  theology  which  alone  might  give  it  any  rational 
coherence,  it  builds  it  over  a  magazine  of  logical  contradic- 
tions, into  which  philosophy  can  carry  her  torch  only  to  ex- 
plode all  science  in  ultimate  ignorance  and  all  religion  in 
conscious  illusion. 

At  the  other  extreme,  we  behold  an  Absolutism  which 
would  merely  evaporate  philosophy  in  a  fanciful  omniscience. 
Besides  expanding  her  sphere  beyond  the  reach  of  finite  mind, 
it  would  then  vainly  claim  an  immediate,  infinite  knowledge. 
As  heralded  by  Fichte,  Schelling,  and  Hegel,  it  sought  to 
logically  unfold  all  the  sciences,  both  empirical  and  meta- 
physical, out  of  the  potential  notion  of  the  Absolute,  As 
completed  by  Feuerbach,  Shopcnhauer,  and  Hartmann,  it  has 
sublimated  the  whole  intelligible  universe,  including  nature, 
man  and  god,  into  a  mere  human  conception  or  ideal  rcpre- 


CHAP.  Ill]  Theory  of  Omniscience.  533 

sentation.  And  then  in  this  imaginary  world  of  its  own 
creation,  where  it  has  thus  superseded  the  Creator  in  His 
office  and  usurped  the  function  of  a  revelation,  it  leaves  to 
philosophy  the  task  of  resolving  all  science  into  a  mere 
dazzling  paradox,  and  all  religion  into  a  terrible  mockery. 


CHAPTER    IV. 


e 


THE  FINAL  PHILOSOPHY  OR   THEORY  OF 
PERFECTIBLE  SCIENCE, 


We  have  seen  that  neither  the  Positive  Philosophy  nor  the 
Absolute  Philosophy  can  furnish  an  exhaustive  theory  and 
system  of  knowledge,  divine  and  human ;  the  former,  because 
it  would  ignore  that  whole  metaphysical  region  which  is 
largely  occupied  by  revelation;  and  the  latter,  because  it 
would  supersede  revelation  throughout  that  region.  And 
now  it  remains"  to  inquire  whether  there  be  not  some  future 
and  final  philosophy,  wherein  reason  shall  appear  concurrent 
with  revelation,  and  human  science  be  rendered  harmonious 
with  Divine  Omniscience. 

"  Not  to  despair  of  philosophy,"  said  Sir  William  Hamil- 
ton, "  is  a  last  infirmity  of  noble  minds."  And  never  did  a 
noble  mind  succeed  better  in  conquering  it.  No  philosopher 
in  modern  times  has  striven  so  hard  to  set  bounds  to  the 
cognitive  instinct,  or  brought  to  the  task  such  transcendent 
powers.  Other  thinkers  may  have  had  their  moments  of 
scepticism  or  misgiving  as  to  the  attainment  of  absolute  truth, 
and  some  may  even  have  abandoned  the  pursuit  as  hopeless ; 
but  what  was  in  him,  from  the  first,  a  constitutional  tendency 
had  become  also  a  philosophical  theory,  and  at  length  a  reli- 
gious creed.  The  discipline  which  he  inculcated  was  that  of  a 
"  prudent  nescience;"  his  goal  for  the  whole  intellectual  career 
would  have  been  a  "  learned  ignorance ;"  and  over  the  very 
portal  of  revelation  he  wrote,  as  a  flaming  menace,  the  inscrip- 
tion, "  To  the  unknown  God."  Even  from  philosophy  hcr- 
534 


CHAP.  IV.]  Tlicory  of  Perfectible  Science.  535 

self  he  sought  to  wring  stultifying  "  testimonies,"  displaying 
the  chance  confessions  of  her  disciples,  in  learned  array,  as 
but  so  many  fagots  for  her  funeral  pyre.  If  nothing  is  left 
her  but  to  die,  it  must  be  confessed  that  in  these  charming 
disquisitions  she  can  find  what  Coleridge  terms  her  "euthanasy 
and  apotheosis." 

We  do  not  forget  the  noble  services  of  the  great  Edinburgh 
philosopher  at  the  juncture  when  he  appeared.  No  one  now 
thinks  of  denying  that  the  "  Philosophy  of  the  Conditioned," 
viewed  as  a  check  upon  the  "  Philosophy  of  the  Absolute,"  has 
had,  and  is  still  having,  a  most  wholesome  influence.  It  was 
the  protest  of  robust,  Scottish  common  sense  against  the 
vagaries  of  German  transcendentalism,  and  the  dazzling 
generalizations  of  French  eclecticism.  Appearing  at  a  time 
when  philosophy  seemed  in  a  fair  way  to  degenerate  into  mere 
speculative  cosmogony,  it  served  to  dissipate  the  brilliant 
world-bubbles  with  which  grave  thinkers  were  amusing  them- 
selves, and  has  already  restored  a  more  healthy  and  mascu- 
line tone  to  all  modern  thinking.  The  result  is,  that  the 
philosopher  no  longer  seeks,  spider-like,  to  spin  the  whole 
phenomenal  universe  as  a  mere  gossamer  of  abstractions  out 
of  his  own  subjectivity,  mistaking  the  flimsy  logic  of  man  for 
the  essential  process  of  nature ;  but  is  content  to  explore 
cautiously  the  region  of  facts  and  principles,  recognizing,  at 
every  step,  the  limitations,  as  well  as  the  capacities  of  his 
own  mental  constitution.  To  have  thus  checked  the  specu- 
lative prosperity  in  the  midst  of  a  wide-spreading  hallucina- 
tion, and  brought  it  back  to  the  paths  of  reason  and  common 
sense,  is  a  service  which  cannot  be  too  gratefully  felt,  and  will 
place  the  name  of  Hamilton  among  the  brightest  in  the  annal.'- 
of  philosophy. 

Nor  will  we,  in  the  least,  undervalue  the  polemical  uses  of 
his  logic  against  false  philosophy,  by  insisting  upon  its  entire 
want  of  positive  fruit  and  constructive  power,  when  it  is  re- 
membered that  he  did  not  himself  pretend  to  build  up  any- 
thing in  place  of  the  systems  which  he  had  destroyed,  but 
rather  strove  to  demonstrate  that  we  have  neither  foundation 
nor  material  for  absolute  science  or  knowledge  of  things  as 
they  are,  and  that  all  efforts  after  such  knowledge  must,  in  the 


5  3^  Tlic  Final  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

nature  of  the  case,  be  abortive.  It  is  in  fact  not  so  much  with 
the  master  as  with  his  disciples  that  we  join  issue.  We 
beUeve  them  to  have  made  a  use  of  his  doctrine  of  nescience 
which,  however  naturally  it  may  have  followed,  he  did  not 
foresee,  and  could  not  have  approved.  What  was  perhaps 
meant  to  serve  as  mere  logical  discipline  and  safe- guard,  has 
been  hastily  applied  by  one  party  to  questions  of  religion, 
and  by  another  to  questions  of  science,  in  a  manner  suited  to 
bring  them  both  into  contempt.  As  a  consequence,  we  behold 
at  the  feet  of  the  same  teacher  a  school  of  Christian  apologists 
resolving  the  material  of  faith  into  sheer  contradiction,  and  a 
school  of  sceptical  scientists  resolving  the  material  of  know- 
ledge into  mere  ignorance.  Scarcely  has  Mr.  Mansel,  from 
the  extreme  right  brought  forward  his  theoiy  of  a  regulative 
revelation  which  shall  accommodate  the  truth  to  our  faculties, 
when  Mr.  Spencer,  from  the  extreme  left,  rejoins  with  a 
homily  on  the  "transcendent  impiety  which  claims  to  pene- 
trate the  secrets  of  the  Power  manifested  to  us  through  all 
existence — nay,  even  to  stand  behind  that  Power,  and  note 
the  conditions  to  its  action."  Thus  the  very  cant  of  divines 
is  becoming  the  creed  of  thinkers,  at  the  same  time  that  the 
speculations  of  thinkers  are  made  the  dogmas  of  divines  ;  and 
we  are  ready  to  fancy  ourselves  looking  at  a  sort  of  philo- 
sophical masquerade,  in  which  orthodoxy  itself  strives  to  be 
wise  above  that  which  is  written,  while  even  infidelity  affects 
to  be  meek  and  lowly. 

There  is  of  course  somewhat  of  good  as  well  as  evil  in 
these  extraordinary  interactions.  They  illustrate  that  benefi- 
cent law  of  progress,  by  which  extremists  are  sometimes 
driven  to  exchange  positions  before  they  settle  into  a  just 
agreement ;  and  we  cite  them,  not  merely  in  proof  that  the 
mission  of  the  Hamiltonian  metaphysics  is  drawing  to  a  close, 
but  also  as  signs  of  a  better  day  which  we  may  hope  it  is 
heralding.  Everything,  indeed,  in  the  present  state  of  phi- 
losophy, betokens  a  crisis  already  passed,  a  reaction  at  hand, 
and  a  commencing  return  to  the  normal  use  of  reason. 
The  genius  of  modern  research,  after  a  long  course  of  specu- 
lation, in  which  it  has  been  hurried  to  the  wildest  extremes, 
by  turns  accepting  and  rejecting  the  most  opposite  premises. 


CHAP.  IV.]  Theory  of  Perfectible  Science.  537 

now  denying  what  it  would  be  next  to  madness  to  doubt,  anon 
admitting  what  it  would  be  almost  idiocy  to  believe,  seems  at 
length  to  have  run  the  entire  round  of  theories,  and  exhausted 
the  utmost  capacity  of  thought ;  and  that  very  apathy  which 
its  excesses  have  engendered,  amounting  in  some  minds  to  a 
cynical  unbelief,  and  tinging  at  times  the  most  serious  themes 
with  satire,  may  prove  to  be  but  the  wholesome  disgust  with 
which  it  is  going  back  to  the  ways  of  simplicity  and  truth. 
One  might  almost  liken  its  present  posture  to  that  of  heathen 
philosophy  at  the  dawn  of  Christianity,  when,  after  having 
pursued  from  dire  necessity,  rather  than  perverse  choice,  the 
same  fruitless  career,  it  sat  among  decaying  superstitions  and 
errors,  as  in  the  melancholy  twilight  yearning  for  the  day- 
spring. 

We  may  accord  to  Hamilton  the  merit  of  this  great  reac- 
tion; butvve  surely  cannot. abide  in  the  mere  reaction  itself 
as  a  finality.  His  theory  of  absolute  ignorance,  salutary  as  it 
has  proved  for  a  time,  appears  to  us  as  little  likely  to  ex- 
haust the  function  of  philosophy  as  to  bring  about  a  peace 
among  philosophers  themselves.  While  v/e  may  join  him  in 
repudiating  the  vain  .dogma  of  an  immediate  omniscience,  we 
must  still  question  if  the  only  alternative  be  that  of  simple 
nescience.  It  would  seem  to  be  as  irrational  to  assume  that 
man  can  know  nothing  as  to  presume  that  he  can  know 
everything.  The  Conditionist,  too,  has  proved  himself  to  be 
quite  as  one-sided  and  reckless  a  thinker  as  the  much-abused 
Absolutist.  And  now  that  the  antagonists,  as  in  the  trite 
fable  of  the  two  knights,  under  the  impulses  of  controversy 
have  been  forced  to  exchange  views  of  the  same  twofold 
reality,  it  only  remains  that  both  should  lose  sight  of  their 
several  errors  in  the  recognition  of  their  common  truths. 

Such  a  candid  comparison  of  the  two  great  phases  of 
modern  thought  has,  indeed,  come  to  be  the  first  duty  of  the 
philosopher.  And  it  is  fortunate  that  his  task  is  at  length  so 
simple  and  obvious.  A  little  reflection  will  shov/  that  but 
one  course  is  now  open  to  the  speculative  mind.  It  would  be 
folly  to  reject  either  of  its  present  tendencies,  merely  because 
of  their  extreme  development,  and  it  would  be  impossible  to 
hold  to  both  in  their  existing  antagonism.  Accepting  each 
3-« 


538  The  Final  Philosophy.  [part  11. 

as  alike  with  the  other  legitimate  and  irrepressible,  we  must 
find  for  them,  in  their  rebound,  some  middle  region  of  belief 
or  theory  which  they  can  hold  in  common,  and  some  healthy 
interaction  by  means  of  which  their  dissolving  contrasts  shall 
vanish  in  the  unity  of  truth,  the  harmony  of  knowledge,  and 
the  perfection  of  reason.  In  other  words,  the  problem  which 
is  now  to  be  met  is  that  of  a  logical  conciliation  of  the  Abso- 
lute Philosophy  and  the  Positive  Philosophy,  in  some  one 
final  philosophy  which  shall  be  their  sequel  and  complement. 

And  to  this  great  problem  the  foremost  thinkers  of  the  age 
would  seem  to  be  already  addressing  themselves;  more  or 
less  consciously  it  may  be,  but  not  without  hopefulness.  The 
very  exigency  out  of  which  it  arises  has  brought  with  it  a 
spirit  favorable  to  the  inquiry.  That  failure  of  the  speculative 
faculty,  in  any  single  direction  to  find  for  itself  a  complete 
theory  of  knowledge,  while  it  may  have  driven  some  minds 
into  scepticism,  and  others  into  mysticism,  has  but  served  in 
the  more  moderate  class,  to  foster  those  philosophic  virtues 
of  caution,  humility,  patience,  candor,  and  catholicity,  which 
are  most  needed  in  a  work  of  conciliation  and  reconstruction, 
and  now  only  wait  to  be  led  into  action.  At  least  we  very 
much  mistake  the  tone  of  some  later  speculations  if  this  is  not 
a  common  and  growing  feeling;  and  it  is  in  the  hope  of 
expressing  it  that  we  propose  to  state  the  question  which  we 
have  represented  as  emerging,  and  to  indicate,  as  far  as  may 
be,  the  probable  course  of  philosophical  opinion  respecting  it. 

As  illustrations  of  the  present  speculative  crisis,  we  need 
only  mention  the  rising  German  school  of  ideal-realists,  such 
as  Trendelenberg,  Ulrici,  Zeller,  and  Weis,  who  seek  from 
various  standpoints  to  correlate  thoughts  with  things,  the 
process  of  logic  with  the  course  of  nature,  physics  with  meta- 
physics, and  empirical  with  rational  science.  Another  class 
of  thinkers,  such  as  Flugel,  Tobias,  Stockl,  Steudel,  Wekerle, 
is  discussing  the  true  function,  scope,  and  problems  of  the 
philosophy  of  the  future.  Professor  David  Masson,  in  his 
"  Recent  British  Philosophy,"  has  also  reached  the  conclusion 
that  the  chief  philosophic  question  now  is  between  empiricism 
and  transcendentalism,  agnosticism  and  gnosticism,  nib '1  ism 
and  absolutism. 


CHAP.  IV.]  Thco}y  of  Perfectible  Science.  539 

It  is  often  said  that  there  are,  as  there  could  be,  and  hav^^ 
been,  but  two  distinct  aims  or  tendencies  of  the  philosophic 
mind.  Old  as  the  rival  schools  of  Plato  and  Aristotle,  we 
behold  them  reappearing  with  extraordinary  vigor  in, modern 
Europe;  the  one  mainly  pursued  by  a  line  of  German 
thinkers,  extending  from  Kant  to  Hegel,  and  the  other  by  a 
hne  of  English  thinkers,  extending  from  Bacon  to  Hamilton; 
while,  by  the  constructive  genius  of  the  French,  they  have 
been  respectiv^ely  systematized  in  the  Absolutism  of  Cousin, 
and  the  Positivism  of  Comte.  We  assign  such  positions  to 
the  two  last-named  thinkers,  because  they  are  in  fact  the 
most  consistent  and  consequent  representatives  of  the  schools 
to  which  they  severally  belong.  Cousin  was  proud  to 
acknowledge  himself  a  pupil  of  Hegel,  and,  better  than  any 
other  philosopher  out  of  Germany,  succeeded  in  mastering 
the  doctrine  of  the  Absolute,  and  bringing  it  to  completeness ; 
and  although  Comte  was  indeed  a  stranger  to  Hamilton  in 
everything  but  his  premises,  and  differed  from  him  in  all  other 
respects  as  widely  as  one  philosopher  could  differ .  from 
another,  yet  there  is  no  other  writer,  either  in  or  out  of 
England,  who  has  so  vigorously  carried  out  the  doctrine  of 
the  conditioned  in  the  domain  of  science,  or  so  completely 
filled  up  the  hiatus  which  it  leaves  in  that  of  religion; 
neither  Mr.  Spencer,  with  his  reverence  for  the  Unknowable, 
nor  Mr.  Mansel,  with  his  anthropomorphic  revelation,  being 
half  so  philosophical  as  the  founder  of  the  new  "  Religion  of 
Humanity,"  who  at  least  knew  what  he  professed  to  worship, 
while  they  profess  to  worship  they  know  not  what. 

We  need  hardly  say  that  in  thus  classing  together  different 
thinkers  as  absolutists  or  positivists,  we  mean  only  to  impute 
to  them  what  they  held  in  common,  even  though  it  may  have 
been  without  concert,  and  to  find  for  ourselves  terms  to  indi- 
cate the  two  great  parties  into  which  the  philosophical  world 
has  become  divided  in  respect  to  the  validity  and  extent  of 
our  knowledge,  which  is  the  great  paramount  problem  to  be 
considered.  However  much  such  writers  as  Fichte,  SchelHng,  ( 
Heg-el,  Cousin,  Ferrier,  and  Calderwood,  may  disagree  upon 
minor  questions,  yet  they  are  all  easily  recognized  as  advo- 
cates of  that  solution  of  the  problem  known  as  the  Philoso- 


540  The  Final  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

phy  of  the  Absolute  ;  in  the  same  manner  that  Hamilton, 
Mansel,  Spencer,  Lewes,  Stuart  Mill,  and  Comte,  though  but 
illy  assorted  in  many  respects,  must  be  ranked  together  as 
defenders  of  an  opposite  solution  of  it,  termed  the  Positive 
Philosophy  or  the  Philosophy  of  the  Conditioned. 

It  is  to  be  regretted,  indeed,  that  better  terms  cannot  be 
found  for  expressing  such  important  distinctions ;  but  the 
wide  currency  which  these  have  obtained,  the  recognized  sense 
which  is  attached  to  them,  and  the  difficulty,  at  the  present 
stage  of  inquiry,  of  inventing  others,  more  precise  and  yet  as 
comprehensive,  seem  to  leave  us  no  alternative  but  to  use 
them  with  such  explanations  as  may  serve  to  fix  and  guard 
their  meaning. 

The  terms  Idealism  and  Realism  are  also  in  general  use,  but 
they  are  hardly  precise  enough  for  the  present  purpose  ;  while 
Empiricism  and  Transcendentalism,  though  sufficiently  pre- 
cise, are  wanting  in  comprehensiveness,  as  both  of  them  refer 
obviously  to  the  mere  process  of  knowledge  rather  than  to  its 
content  or  measure.  But  Positivism  and  Absolutism,  besides 
being  free  from  that  somewhat  opprobrious  sense  which  the 
other  terms  have  acquired  as  popular  epithets,  will  respect- 
ively express  the  ideal  and  the  real  departments  of  knowledge, 
at  the  same  time  that  they  characterize  the  two  great  systems 
of  knowledge  with  which  we  are  familiar  as  the  extreme 
results  of  the  empirical  and  transcendental  methods. 

Let  it  then  be  premised  that  the  words  "  Absolute  "  and 
"  Positive "  will  here  be  employed  only  in  their  strictest 
etymological  sense  and  most  philosophical  application,  as  cor- 
relate adjectives  ;  the  former  meaning  that  which  is  absolved 
or  loosed  from  any  necessary  relation ;  what  it  is  as  existing 
by  itself,  in  its  own  interior  essence,  disconnected  from  our 
minds  and  neither  conditioned  nor  modified  by  our  cognitive 
faculties ;  and  the  latter  meaning  that  which  is  posited  or  fixed 
in  some  contingent  relation  ;  what  it  appears  as  manifested  to 
us,  under  its  phenomenal  character,  in  connection  with  our 
minds,  and  either  conditioned  or  modified  by  our  cognitive 
faculties.  According  to  these  definitions,  it  will  be  found  that 
that  which  is  positive  must  also  be  finite,  embracing  only 
manifested  existence;   while  that  which  is  absolute  may  also 


CHAP.  IV.]  Theory  of  Pofcctible  Science.  541 

be  Infinite,  embracing  all  real  existence,  and  also,  that  both 
taken  together,  in  a  religious  sense,  will  imply  each  other  as 
the  co-existing  creation  and  Creator.  The  two  ideas,  how- 
ever, will  come  out  more  clearly  as  we  now  proceed  to  define 
the  two  philosophies  which  are  founded  upon  them. 

The  Positivist  may  in  general  be  said  to  deal  with  things  (^ 
only  as  they  positively  appear  ;  with  facts  and  the  laws  of 
facts  ;  or  as  it  is  more  technically  expressed,  with  the  unifor- 
mities of  succession  and  coexistence  among  phenomena. 
These  he  takes  to  be  the  sole  material  of  exact  knowledge, 
and  restricts  the  philosopher  to  the  task  of  investigating  and 
classifying  them.  The  method  he  pursues  is  a  posteriori,  em- 
pirical, that  of  induction,  or  the  ascent  from  particulars  to 
generals,  from  facts  to  principles  ;  the  faculty  on  which  he 
relies  is  the  sensuous  understanding ;  and  the  outward  means 
which  he  employs  are  such  as  observation,  comparison,  and 
experiment.  He  is  in  his  temperament  practical,  logical,  and 
exact ;  a  man  of  facts,  w^ho  scoffs  at  ideas  as  but  the  mere 
chaff  of  things,  and  is  not  to  be  reasoned  out  of  his  senses. 

The  Absolutist  may  in  general  be  said  to  deal  with  things 
as  they  absolutely  are ;  with  realities  and  causes  ;  or  with  what 
are  technically  termed  substances,  essences,  noumena,  occult 
powers  and  principles.  These  he  holds  to  be  the  only  objects 
of  real  knowledge,  and  calls  upon  the  philosopher  to  boldly 
seize  them,  and  thence  unfold  the  sum  of  truth.  The  method 
which  he  pursues  is  a  priori,  transcendental,  that  of  deduc- 
tion, or  the  descent  from  generals  to  particulars,  from  princi- 
ples to  facts;  the  faculty  upon  which  he  relies  is  the  pure 
reason ;  and  the  inward  processes  to  which  he  yields  himself 
are  those  of  insight,  conjecture,  and  speculation.  He  is  in  his 
habit  of  mind  contemplative,  abstract  and  theoretical ;  a  man 
of  ideas,  who  eschews  facts  as  but  the  mere  husks  of  truth, 
and  is  not  to  be  hoodwinked  by  his  senses. 

We  are  ready  now  to  distinguish  the  two  antagonistic  phi- 
losophies, or  philosophical  tendencies,  from,  each  other. 

As  opposed  to  the  Absolutist,  the  Positivist  holds  a  doctrine 
of  human  nescience.  Howsoever  it  may  be  with  God  or  other 
beings,  man,  he  maintains,  is  so  limited  by  his  cognitive  fac- 
ulties that  he  neither  knows,  nor  can  know,  au"-ht  of  thino-s  as 


542  TJie  Fmal  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

they  absolutely  are  in  themselves,  but  only  as  they  appear  to 
him,  or  are  represented  to  him  in  the  modifying  process  of  his 
own  intelligence.  Conversant  with  these  mere  appearances 
or  pheno-mena,  he  must  utterly  ignore  their  accompanying 
noumena  or  substances  as  realities  which  he  may  indeed 
believe,  but  can  no  more  conceive  than  the  blind  can  fancy 
colors  or  the  deaf  imagine  sounds,  and  which  in  fact,  for  any- 
thing he  knows,  as  they  appear  to  the  inhabitants  of  Saturn 
and  Jupiter,  would  be  to  him  as  inconceivable  as  colors  of 
sounds,  or  sounds  of  colors.  And  to  this  deficiency  in  the 
mode  of  our  knowledge,  he  would  add  a  necessary  limitation 
as  to  its  extent.  Finite  minds  cannot  hope  to  take  in  the 
boundless  unknown,  under  all  its  manifold  aspects.  As  rela- 
ted to  man,  the  universe  of  which  he  forms  a  part,  is  like  a 
polygon  with  but  one  of  its  infinitesimal  sides  adjusted  to  his 
capacity,  and  every  attempt  to  embrace,  even  in  thought,  the 
Infinite  and  Absolute  Reality  can  only  recoil  upon  him  in 
mere  negation  and  contradiction.  That  philosopher,  in  fact, 
who  dreams  of  actually  transcending  the  finite  understanding 
and  soaring  to  some  extra-human  height  of  speculation, 
whence  he  may  survey  all  existence  in  its  essences,  origins, 
and  tendencies,  is  simply  out  of  his  senses.  Is  it  not,  there- 
fore, the  better  part  of  wisdom  and  common  sense  to  take  the 
world  as  we  find  it,  without  seeking  to  vainly  revise  or  com- 
prehend it? 

As  opposed  to  the  Positivist,  the  Absolutist  holds  a  doctrine 
of  human  omniscience.  Real  knowledge,  he  insists,  must  be 
the  same  in  man  as  in  God  and  all  cognitive  beings,  and  so 
far  from  being  restricted  to  mere  phenomena,  it  may,  and 
often  does,  involve  an  apprehension  of  things  as  in  reality  the 
very  opposite  of  their  appearance.  We  know,  for  example,  in 
spite  of  the  misrepresentations  of  our  senses,  that  the  earth 
moves  around  the  sun,  and  though  both  sun  and  earth  should 
appear  to  the  inhabitants  of  Saturn  or  Jupiter  to  be  moving 
around  them,  yet  their  science  or  actual  knowledge  of  the 
facts  could  not  possibly  differ  in  kind  from  ours,  or  even  from 
Omniscience  itself  Nor  is  it  necessary,  in  his  view,  to  set 
any  bounds  to  such  knowledge.  Finite  as  man  may  be,  he  is 
nevertheless  the  microcosm  which  reflects  the  whole  macro- 


CHAP.  IV.]  Theory  of  Perfectible  Science.  543 

cosm  of  the  universe,  as  the  dewdrop  reflects  the  cope  of 
heaven,  and  may  embrace  the  Infinite  and  Absolute  Reahty  in 
his  very  consciousness,  or  seize  it  in  one  swift  intuition  of  his 
intellect,  or  unerringly  recapitulate  it  in  his  logic.  That  phi- 
losopher, indeed,  who  forfeits  these  godlike  powers  of  vision 
and  apprehension,  to  burrow  after  his  five  senses  among  a 
few  facts,  has  but  fallen  from  his  humanity,  and  lost  his  reason. 
Is  it  not  therefore  the  nobler  part  of  the  creature  to  enter  into 
the  wisdom  of  the  Creator,  and  find  out  that  ideal  of  the  cre- 
ation w^hich  is  becoming  actual  ? 

Let  us  next  trace  the  two  philosophies  to  their  final  results, 
in  the  more  practical  spheres  where  they  issue. 

On  the  one  side,  the  extreme  Positivist  becomes  at  length 
a  sceptic  in  religion  as  well  as  in  science.  Having  ignored 
the  Absolute,  or  resolved  it  into  contradictions,  he  cannot 
long  retain  as  credible  that  which  he  has  proved  to  be  both 
incognizable  and  inconceivable;  he  cannot  believe  in  that 
which  he  can  neither  think  nor  know.  He  is  therefore  left 
without  God  in  the  world.  And  the  universe  remains  to  him 
but  as  a  museum  of  dry  facts ;  life  is  but  a  struggle  against 
death  ;  and  nature  is  but  the  splendid  tomb  of  man.  Or  if  he 
recoil  from  this  gulf  of  atheism,  it  is  only  to  frame  for  himself, 
out  of  the  remaining  social  phenomena  with  which  he  has  to 
deal,  a  kind  of  scientific  religion,  with  Humanity  for  his  God, 
savants  for  his  priests,  industry  for  his  worship,  fame  for  his 
immortality,  and  a  civilized  earth  as  his  heaven. 

On  the  other  side,  the  extreme  absolutist  becomes  at  length 
a  mystic  in  science  as  well  as  in  religion.  Having  transcended 
all  positive  phenomena,- or  absorbed  them  in  the  process  of 
reason,  he  claims  that  to  be  fully  comprehensible  which  he 
has  proved  to  be  conceivable ;  he  believes  he  can  know  what- 
soever he  can  think.  Both  the  world  therefore  and  God  are 
lost  in  himself;  and  the  universe  becomes  to  him  but  as  a 
passing  vision  of  phaenomena ;  time  but  as  a  mere  shadow 
of  eternity ;  and  man  but  as  a  gilded  bubble  on  the  stream 
of  nature.  And  not  dizzied  at  this  height  of  pantheism, 
he  even  dreams  of  a  kind  of  intuitive  omniscience,  by 
which  both  experience  and  revelation  are  to  be  super- 
seded, facts   resolved    into   ideas,  creation  reduced  to  loijic, 


544  The  Final  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

and  the  whole  dissolving  universe  reviewed  from  its  genesis 
to  its  apocalypse. 

The  eye  may  now  assist  the  mind,  if  we  view  the  opposite 
terms  of  .the  two  philosophies  in  parallel  columns.  •  They 
will  exhibit  their  contrasts  under  several  heads : 

(l.)   AS   TO   THE  MATERIAL  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

Appearances  versus  Realities. 

Phsenomena  "  Noumena. 

Qualities  "  Essences. 

Accidents  "  Substances. 

The  Contingent  "  The  Necessary. 

The  Particular  "  The  Universal. 

The  Finite  «'  The  Infinite. 

The  Conditioned  "  The  Unconditioned. 

(2.)    AS  TO  THE  PROCESS  OF   KNOWLEDGE. 

The  Understanding  versus  The  Reason. 

Sensation  "  Reflection. 

Observation  "  Intuition. 

Experiment  '«  Conjecture. 

Induction  <♦  Deduction. 

Analysis  «'  Synthesis. 

Common  Sense  '<  Genius. 

Discovery  "  Revelation. 

(3.)    AS  TO  THE   SYSTEM   OF   KNOWLEDGE. 

Realism  versus      ,  Idealism. 

Scepticism  "  Mysticism. 

Empiricism  '«  Transcendentalism. 

Materialism  ««  Spiritualism. 

Atheism  "  Pantheism. 

Agnosticism  «  Gnosticism. 

Other  terms,  of  like  import,  might  be  added  to  each  class, 
but  these  will  suffice  as  familiar  specimens.  To  sum  up  the 
results  of  the  whole  comparison  in  a  few  words :  The  abso- 
lutist, trusting  solely  to  his  reason,  would  penerrate  behind 
or  beyond  phaenomena  in  search  of  their  essence  or  cause, 
and  endeavor  by  mere  logical  process  from  assumed  princi- 
ples to  revise  and  reconstruct  the  existing  universe;  while 
the  positivist,  trusting  solely  to  his  senses,  would  abandon 
realities  for  their  appearances  or  phaenomena,  and  endeavor 
by  mere  empirical  process  from  admitted  facts  to  investigate 
and  modify  the  existing  universe.  And  while  the  former 
would  erect  the  sciences  into  a  system  of  philosophic  omnis- 


CHAP.  IV.]  Tlicory  of  Perfectible  Science.  545 

cience,  and  so  abruptly  consummate  the  task  of  philosophy; 
the  other  would  as  abruptly  leave  it  incomplete,  by  erecting 
them  into  a  system  of  philosophic  nescience.  Thus  the  pyra- 
mid might  serve  as  a  symbol  of  the  one  and  the  obelisk  of 
the  other.  And  if  (adopting  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  quotations) 
to  the  one  we  might  apply  the  maxim  of  Abelard,  "  Intellige, 
ut  credas"  (Know,  that  you  may  believp),  to  the  other  might 
be  applied  that  of  Anselm,  "  Crede,  ut  intelligas"  (Believe, 
that  you  may  know). 

Such  are  the  two  philosophies  to  be  reconciled.  And  we 
ask,  if  to  merely  state  them  with  any  fairness  is  not  to  find 
them  already  somewhat  accordant?  Why  should  we  be  in 
haste  to  reject  one  more  than  the  other,  or  to  maintain  one 
against  the  other?  Who  would  be  so  bold  as  to  ignore 
either  category  of  cognizable  material ;  phaenomena  or  nou- 
mena?  or  so  rash  as  to  obliterate  either  class  of  cognitive 
faculties;  the  empirical  or  the  rational?  or  so  vain  as  to 
dream  of  swallowing  up  the  cognitive  capacity,  either  in 
infinite  knowledge  or  absolute  ignorance  ?  Which  of  the  two 
philosophies  alone,  without  the  other,  could  develop  our 
whole  power  of  knowing,  or  exhaust  the  entire  sum  of  the 
knowable?  May  they  not  both  be  essential  to  the  comple- 
tion of  philosophy?  And  must  we  not  begin  to  look  for  the 
grounds  and  means  of  their  conciliation  ? 

Our  first  argument  for  this  view  is,  that  both  philosophies 
are  deeply  rooted  in  the  human  mind  and  have  grown  and 
spread  for  centuries  in  history,  until  now  they  have  become 
interwoven  with  the  most  precious  interests  of  civilization. 

There  is  no  sound  mental  constitution  in  which  the  germs 
of  both  are  not  to  be  found,  or  from  which  they  can  be 
wholly  extirpated.  In  every  community  of  scholars,  in  every 
circle  of  thinkers,  their  respective  representatives  will  appear. 
Every  man  may  be  said  to  be  characterized  by  one  or  the 
other.  Some  are  such  intense  positivists,  they  will  confine 
themselves  to  the  few  facts  within  reach  of  their  senses,  pro- 
nouncing all  beyond  these  a  region  of  pure  faith  or  mere 
conjecture ;  some  are  such  thorough  absolutists,  they  will 
almost  question  facts  themselves  until  they  have  gone  behind 
them  in  search  of  their  causes  and  reasons;  still  others 
3-T 


546  The  Final  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

would  seem  to  be  absolutists  as  to  one  set  of  facts  and  posi- 
tivists  as  to  another,  or  absolutists  and  positivists  by  turns  as 
to  the  same  facts,  according  to  their  prejudices  or  circum- 
stances. -  The  sceptic  in  religion  will  be  a  mystic  in-  science 
and  become  the  dupe  of  any  vulgar  imposture;  or  the 
mystic  in  religion  will  be  a  sceptic  in  science  and  dogmatize 
against  mathematical  certainty  itself;  or  the  most  exact 
scientist,  alike  with  the  most  devout  religionist,  will  be  found 
culling  texts  or  facts  to  suit  some  wild  hypothesis.  But  he 
who  is  wholly  without  one  or  the  other  of  these  philosophical 
elements,  or  possessing  one  denies  or  suppresses  the  other, 
can  only  serve  as  an  example  of  an  undeveloped  or  abnormal 
intellect. 
r  And  what  is  thus  patent  in  the  very  constitution  of  the 
human  intellect  has  been  conspicuous  throughout  history. 
Everywhere,  and  in  all  ages,  these  two  original  tendencies 
have  appeared,  acting  and  reacting  upon  each  other,  and  by 
turns  predominating  in  the  whole  existing  civilization.  If  we 
go  back  to  the  primitive  world,  we  shall  behold  them  upon  a 
grand  scale,  diverging  eastward  and  westward  on  opposite 
sides  of  the  globe,  until  they  have  reached  their  extreme 
development  as  literal  antipodes  of  thought,  in  that  Asiatic 
absolutism  which  would  lose  the  finite  in  the  infinite  as  but  a 
dream  of  Brahm;  and  that  European  positivism  which  would 
lose  the  infinite  in  the  finite  under  a  portion  of  consecrated 
bread.  Or,  if  we  view  them  upon  a  smaller  scale,  as  de- 
veloped in  that  part  of  the  world  with  which  we  are  most 
familiar,  we  have  but  to  think  of  such  representative  names 
as  Plato  and  Aristotle  in  Greek  philosophy,  Anselm  and 
Abelard  in  scholastic  philosophy.  Bacon  and  Descartes  in 
modern  philosophy,  and  Hegel  and  Comte  in  existing  philo- 
sophy, in  order  to  see  that  he  must  simply  strike  out  one 
page  of  history,  who  would  ignore  either  of  the  two 
tendencies. 

It  is  true  that  attempts  have  been  made  to  write  the  history 
of  philosophy,  in  the  interest  of  one  to  the  exclusion  of  the 
other,  or  at  least  to  press  the  evidence  of  one  in  a  partisan 
spirit,  against  that  of  the  other.  The  "  Philosophical  Testimo- 
nies," adduced  by  Hamilton,  bear  marks  of  that  erudition  for 


CHAP.  IV.]  Theory  of  Perfectible  Science.  547 

which  he  was  so  distinguished,  and  yet,  regarded  as  a  strict 
historic  induction,  they  are  open  to  at  least  three  serious 
objections:  ist.  They  consist  mainly  of  a  mere  crude  aggre- 
gate of  names,  authorities,  maxims,  extracts,  culled  with  a 
foregone  purpose,  and  without  anything  in  the  nature  of  an 
exhaustive  sur\'ey  of  all  the  intellectual  phaenomena  of  the 
periods  to  which  they  severally  belong.  2d.  Many  of  them, 
especially  those  pertaining  to  the  scholastic  age,  are  simply 
religious  confessions  of  the  weakness  and  depravity  of  the 
carnal  understanding,  rather  than  philosophical  definitions  of 
the  normal  limits  and  capacities  of  the  intellect.  3d.  Such  of 
them  as  are  strictly  philosophical  can  easily  be  balanced  if 
not  outweighed,  by  numerous  and  powerful  testimonies  to  the 
opposite  doctrine.  Place  in  the  scale  with  this  treatise  the 
equally  learned  and  sagacious  work  of  Cousin  on  the  History 
of  Philosophy,  and  it  will  be  seen,  that  History  refuses  to 
commit  herself  to  one  tendency  more  than  the  other,  but 
claims  both  as  alike  ineradicable  and  universal. 

And  as  a  consequence  of  their  deep  roots  and  long  growth 
in  the  past  life  of  the  race,  they  have  sent  forth  and  inter- 
woven their  branches  through  all  modern  society.  In  their 
wake  have  followed  portentous  systems  of  science,  politics, 
and  religion,  which  as  simple  monuments  of  speculative 
energy  are  suited  to  fill  the  mind  with  wonder,  while  in  their 
practical  bearings  upon  the  most  vital  interests,  they  are 
already  formidable  for  good  as  well  as  for  evil. 

This  is  certainly  true  of  the  supreme  interest  of  religion. 
It  were  idle  to  maintain,  that  either  of  the  two  philosophical 
tendencies  is  essentially  '  depraved  or  depraving,  when  we 
behold  them  flowing  along  together,  where  the  stream  of 
history  is  most  open  and  pure,  in  the  very  channels  of  the 
Church,  and  under  the  full  blaze  of  the  Christian  revelation. 
From  the  first  chapter  of  the  Gospel  of  St.  John  to  the  last 
chapter  of  the  most  recent  theological  treatise,  Christianity 
has  in  fact  been  striving  after  a  philosophical  statement  and 
vindication  of  her  peculiar  facts  and  truths,  through  the  for- 
mulas of  one  or  the  other  of  these  two  rival  schools  of 
speculation.  The  inevitable  task  of  adjusting  the  human 
intellect  to  the  divine  intellect,  and  accounting  to  reason  for 


548  The  Final  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

the  content  of  revelation,  has  involved  the  one  as  much  as 
the  other.  And  we  have  only  to  survey  the  present  state  of 
religious  parties  with  regard  to  them  to  see  how  impossible 
it  would  be  to  draw  the  lines  between  them,  so  as  to  drive 
either  beyond  the  pale  of  orthodoxy.  If  the  Hegelian  abso- 
lutism, at  one  extreme,  became  evaporated  into  a  mere 
Christian  mythology,  yet  at  the  other  extreme,  it  aspired 
after  nothing  less  than  a  true  Christian  theology;  and 
although  the  Hamiltonian  positivism,  as  we  have  seen,  has 
been  driven  on  the  one  side  toward  the  abyss  of  a  scientific 
atheism,  yet  on  the  other,  it  has  been  hailed  as  a  new  bul- 
wark of  the  most  orthodox  faith.  Extravagant  as  such 
opposite  results  may  appear,  yet  there  is  too  much  truth  as 
well  as  error  involved  in  these  systems,  for  the  Christian 
divine  to  think  of  either  despising  or  disparaging  them,  and 
he  who  idly  strikes  a  blow  at  them  has  need  to  beware  lest 
he  be  found  aiming  at  the  vitals  of  Christianity  itself 

And  the  same  is  not  less  true  of  the  great  interest  of  sci- 
ence. If  we  are  tempted  to  regard  the  two  philosophical  ten- 
dencies as  mere  speculative  efforts,  recurring  from  age  to  age 
without  aim  or  issue,  we  have  only  to  trace  their  historical 
connection  with  the  various  bodies  of  real  knowledge,  which 
they  have  respectively  nourished,  and  which  they  still  involve, 
after  centuries  of  growth,  in  a  state  of  intellectual  schism  and 
anarchy.  And  it  is  only  when  cither  has  been  exclusively 
followed  that  it  has  run  into  flagrant  error.  If  the  positivism 
represented  by  Bacon  has  been  driven  by  Comte  to  the  extreme 
of  the  baldest  materialism  in  the  domain  of  metaphysics,  yet 
has  not  the  absolutism,  initiated  by  Descartes,  been -carried 
by  Schelling  to  the  sheerest  mysticism  in  the  domain  of 
physics  ?  Leaving  out  of  view  such  mere  vagaries  of  the 
two  procedures,  and  surveying  only  their  positive  contents  or 
results,  the  empirical  or  physical  sciences  issuing  from  the 
one,  and  the  rational  or  metaphysical  sciences  issuing  from  the 
other,  it  will  be  seen  that  to  ignore  either  of  them  Avould  be  to 
paralyze  an  entire  half  of  the  body  of  knowledge,  as  well  as  to 
imperil  some  of  the  most  catholic  and  lasting  interests  of 
humanity  itself 

But  we  arc  now  ready  for  our  next  argument,  which  is,  that 


CHAP.  IV.]  Theory  of  Perfectible  Science.  549 

the  two  philosophies,  if  logically  adjusted-  and  combined, 
would  so  check  and  complete  each  other,  as  to  yield  the  one, 
final  philosophy  of  the  future.  And  this,  whatever  -view  we 
take  of  the  mission  of  philosophy,  whether  it  concern  the 
method,  or  the  theory,  or  the  system  of  perfect  knowledge.     ^ 

Is  it  primarily  her  mission  to  prescribe  a  method  of  perfect 
knowledge,  to  train  the  cognitive  faculty  to  precise  action,  and 
equip  the  social  intellect  with  all  possible  means  and  modes 
of  research  ?  Then  it  is  not  in  either  of  the  antagonistic 
methods,  now  separately  pursued,  that  such  symmetrical  dis- 
cipline can  be  found.  Both  are  alike  needed  as  mutual  cor- 
rectives and,  so  long  as  followed  apart,  must  become  errone- 
ous and  pernicious.  As  a  sound  absolutism  will  be  the  only 
cure  for  the  materialism,  scepticism,  and  atheism  of  the 
extreme  positivist,  so  a  sound  positivism  will  be  the  only 
cure  for  the  idealism,  mysticism,  and  pantheism  of  the  extreme 
absolutist.  Let  the  deductive  process  of  the  one  be  pressed 
in  ignorance  of  the  laws  of  facts,  and  our  science  cannot  but 
be  vague  and  visionary ;  let  the  inductive  process  of  the  other 
be  pressed  in  ignorance  of  the  causes  of  facts,  and  our  science 
cannot  but  be  partial  and  schismatic  ;  but  let  both  processes 
be  conjoined  as  complementary  factors  of  knowledge;  the 
deductive  with  the  inductive,  the  rational  with  the  empirical, 
intuition  with  experience,  conjecture  with  observation,  revela- 
tion with  discovery,  and  then  we  may  hope  for  that  Ultimatum 
Orgmiiim,  or  last  unerring  logic,  by  which  philosophy  is  to 
mount  toward  perfect  knowledge. 

But  is  it  furthermore  her  mission  to  provide  a  theory  of 
such  perfect  knowledge,  to  discern  the  grounds,  limits,  and 
goal  of  real  science,  and  frame  for  its  wrangling  votaries  a 
doctrine  which  shall  ensure  their  spontaneous  concurrence 
and  cooperation  ?  Then  it  is  not  in  either  of  the  rival 
schools,  now  contending  for  the  mastery,  that  the  elements  of 
that  one  catholic  creed  of  reason  must  be  sought.  Only  by 
rejecting  their  incidental  errors  and  combining  their  residual 
truths,  can  we  secure  rational  agreement.  If  we  concede  to 
the  positivist  that  our  knowledge  is  both  finite  and  of  the 
finite,  and  that  faith  is  complcmental  to  it,  in  practically  appre- 
hending the  infinite,  we  may  still  maintain,  with  the  absolutist, 


55^  The  Final  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

that  the  sphere  of  our  knowledge  is  ever  encroaching  upon 
the  sphere  of  our  faith,  and  that  therefore  the  two  are  ideally 
or  ultimately  coincident ;  in  other  words,  that  positive  science 
is  indefinitely  extensible  towards  absolute  science.  Or  if  we 
concede  to  the  absolutist  that  our  knowledge  is  hypothetically 
infinite,  and  may  even  be  imagined  as  at  length  swallowing  up 
faith  in  intuition,  or  surmounting  it  with  logic,  we  might  still 
maintain  with  the  positivist,  that  the  goal  of  our  knowledge  is 
but  an  ideal  of  our  faith,  and  as  such,  though  ever  to  be 
approached,  is  never  to  be  attained  ;  in  other  words,  that  abso- 
lute science  is  only  perfectible  through  positive  science.  And 
when  we  have  thus  embraced  in  one  view  both  provinces  of 
cognition,  the  phsenomenal  together  with  the  noumenal,  the 
laws  of  facts  together  with  their  causes,  the  finite  together 
with  the  infinite,  the  discoverable  together  with  the  revealable, 
we  shall  have  that  Omne  Scibile,  or  exhaustive  theory  of  the 
knowable,  by  which  philosophy  can  survey  the  very  infinitude 
of  reality  as  her  domain  and  anticipate  a  progressive  science 
thereof  as  her  career. 

And  will  it  finally  be  her  mission  to  organize  a  system  of 
such  perfect  knowledge,  to  exhibit  the  ever  growing  sciences 
in  their  logical  relations,  according  to  their  normal  order,  and 
deduce  the  axioms  which  determine  their  evolution  and  per- 
fection ?  Then  in  vain  shall  we  look  exclusively  to  either  of 
the  two  extreme  systems,  now  dividing  the  empire  of  know- 
ledge into  hostile  factions.  Not  only  are  both  alike  incom- 
plete, but  we  cannot  even  suppose  the  one  complete  without 
the  other,  or  triumphing  at  the  expense  of  the  other.  Take 
by  itself  the  absolutism  of  Hegel,  the  most  logical  ideal  of  the 
universe  ever  conceived  by  man,  and  what  is  it,  wnth  all  its 
brilliant  categories  of  thought,  but  a  mere  airy  speculation, 
the  toy-world  of  a  creature  vainly  mimicking  the  Creator  ? 
Or  take  by  itself  the  positivism  of  Comte,  the  most  rigorous 
construction  of  ph.xnomena  ever  devised  by  man,  and  what 
is  it  with  all  its  imposing  masses  of  fact,  but  a  mere  baseless 
generalization,  no  better  than  the  myth  of  the  world-uphold- 
ing elephant  standing  upon  nothing?  But  imagine  now  a 
system  in  which  both  of  these  systems  shall  have  been 
thoroughly  sifted  and  blended;  fancy  a  positivism  empirically 


CHAP.  IV.]  Theory  of  Perfectible  Science.  5  5 1 

correcting  and  perfecting  the  ideas  of  the  absolutist,  and  an 
absolutism  rationally  explaining  and  harmonizing  the  phe- 
nomena of  the  positivist,  the  former  ever  ascending  inductively 
from  facts  towards  the  same  principles  from  which  the  latter 
is  ever  deductively  descending  towards  the  same  facts  ;  and 
then  think  of  the  physical  sciences  issuing  from  the  one,  as 
complemented  by  the  metaphysical  sciences  issuing  from  the 
other,  and  of  both  as  proceeding  together,  in  their  respective 
provinces  of  research,  under  ascertained  laws,  with  ceaseless 
accessions,  throughout  the  universe  of  reality,  towards  the 
very  fulness  of  absolute  truth, — and  we  shall  have  that  Scicntia 
Scientiariwi,  or  vision  of  ever-expanding  knowledge,  in  which 
philosophy  may  find  her  noblest  function  discharged,  and 
her  highest  mission  accomplished. 

It  appears,  therefore,  that  the  two  philosophies  are  true  in 
what  they  affirm,  and  false  only  in  what  they  deny,  or  that 
they  become  erroneous  simply  by  being  pursued  against  or 
without  each  other;  and  that  in  proportion  as  they  could  be 
combined  in  theory  and  practice,  they  would  but  exhibit  to  us 
complemental  aspects  of  the  same  reality,  related  truths  of 
the  same  facts,  and  together  tend  towards  perfect  knowledge 
itself,  like  geometrical  lines  which  we  know  must  ever 
approach,  even  if  they  never  meet. 

Our  last  argument  is,  that  this  reconciliation,  besides  beingy 
thus  desirable  and  conceivable,  would  seem  at  length  to  be  | 
already  imminent  and  practicable.  It  could  not  have  been- 
effected  hitherto,  and  may  be  effected  now. 

If  it  be  asked  why  it  could  not  have  been  effected  hitherto, 
or  why,  with  both  tendencies  in  action  for  ages,  there  should 
have  been  such  a  recurrence  of  the  same  speculative  errors, 
we  reply,  that  this  may  have  been  necessary  in  order  to  expose 
conclusively  their  separate  weakness  and  absolute  need  of 
each  other ;  or,  howsoever  that  may  be,  that  it  is  at  least  a  fact, 
that  never  before  have  they  been  driven  to  those  wild 
extremes,  those  last  conceivable  limits,  into  which  they  have 
at  length  diverged ;  nor  consequently  have  they  ever  before 
developed  so  favorable  an  exigency  for  precipitating  their  own 
mutual  recoil  and  coalition.  As  it  was  reserved  for  Hegel  to 
carry  an   exclusive  absolutism  to  the  very  climax   of  absur- 


552  The  Final  Philosopliy.  [part  ii. 

dity,  by  confounding  thoughts  with  things,  identifying  creation 
with  logic,  and  converting  deity  into  humanity,  so  it  only 
remained  for  Comte  to  drive  an  exclusive  positivism  to  a  like 
pitch  of  folly,  by  ignoring  realities  for  phenomena,  evapora- 
ting causes  into  fictions,  and  substituting  humanity  in  place  of 
deity.  Any  farther  in  either  direction,  it  is  not  possible  for 
errant  philosophy  to  go  ;  and  the  only  alternatives  left  to  her 
are,  either  to  relapse  into  her  old  antagonisms,  or  start  forward 
•under  their  resultant  impulse,  in  a  new  career  of  ever-unfold- 
ing knowledge. 

And  that  the  great  reconciliation  is  already  practicable,  ac- 
tually within  the  capacity  of  the  human  intellect,  cannot  be 
doubted  by  any  one  who  will  thoughtfully  survey  the  philo- 
sophical world  at  the  present  moment.  Not  only  is  that 
theory  of  perfect  knowledge,  here  indeed  but  too  feebly  indi- 
cated, an  ideal  toward  which  many  minds  from  different  points 
are  groping  with  more  or  less  intelligent  aspiration ;  not  only 
is  it  such  an  ideal  as  can  alone  satisfy  the  cognitive  instinct, 
else  to  be  forever  baffled  or  bewildered;  and  not  only  is  its 
fulfillment  logically  required  by  the  whole  previous  develop- 
ment and  present  exigency  of  reason,  but  the  very  means  and 
materials,  as  well  as  motives,  for  its  fulfillment  are  at  hand,  in 
that  mass  of  accumulating  sciences  and  arts,  which  now  offers 
itself  for  logical  organization,  in  that  spirit  of  catholic  research 
which  is  spreading  through  all  the  sects  of  school,  church, 
and  state,  and  in  that  unprecedented  interchange  of  thought, 
which  is  rallying  advanced  thinkers  from  different  lands  and 
of  diverse  creeds,  to  the  final  problems  of  philosophy. 

It  is  true  that  such  an  intellectual  palingenesia,  whensoever 
and  howsoever  effected,  could  not  burst  upon  the  world,  as  in 
an  ordinary  crisis,  with  any  of  the  suddenness  or  amazement 
which  mark  a  great  religious  reformation  or  political  revolu- 
tion. Rather  must  it  proceed  in  secresy  and  silence,  remote 
from  general  observation  and  without  popular  applause,  like 
those  grand  hidden  forces  of  nature,  the  very  thought  of 
which  awes  the  lonely  student  into  worship,  while  the  com- 
mon mind,  engrossed  with  mere  appearance,  scarcely  suspects 
their  existence,  or  only  derides  them  as  wordy  abstractions, 
until  it  finds  itself  in  presence  of  their  surprising  results. 


CHAP.  IV.]  Theory  of  Perfectible  Science,  553 

It  i.s  true,  too,  that  no  single  mind,  or  people,  or  even  gene- 
ration, occupied  with  this  great  work  of  organizing  science 
and  art,  can  hope  alone  to  accomplish  it,  or  claim  the  whole 
glory  of  the  achievement.     In  an  age  when 

"  The  individual  withers,  and  the  world  is  more  and  more," 

we  must  expect  great  themes  to  multiply  great  thinkers,  and 
not  imagine  that,  even  in  the  region  of  reflection,  we  can 
escape  that  division  of  labor  which,  in  the  lower  plane  of  dis- 
covery and  invention,  retains  the  most  distant  strangers  as  co- 
workers, and  often  brings  them  from  their  simultaneous  re- 
searches, as  rival  claimants  to  the  feet  of  science. 

And  it  is  true,  still  further,  that  this  final  philosophy,  as  now 
projected  in  any  minds,  can  be  scarcely  more  than  a  vague 
ideal,  while  to  some  minds  it  may  appear  to  be  as  visionary 
as  it  is  vague,  until  it  shall  have  been  actually  reduced  to  a 
system,  expressed  in  definite  propositions,  and  applied  to  the 
practical  interests  of  life.  In  this  it  is  but  like  every  other 
ideal,  whether  of  philanthropy  or  of  religion.  And  yet,  even 
prior  to  a  full  realization  of  it,  and  in  advance  of  any  tentative 
efforts  towards  it,  there  is  enough  of  certainty  and  grandeur 
in  it  to  enkindle  all  minds  with  hope  and  exultation. 

We  can  at  least  forecast  its  prevailing  spirit.  We  know 
that  it  will  be  at  an  equal  remove  from  the  extreme  methods 
hitherto  pursued.  It  will  be,  what  the  very  word  philosophy 
itself  expresses,  the  wooing  of  wisdom  as  distinguished  alike 
from  the  conceit  which  arrogates  it,  and  the  folly  which 
despises  it.  It  will  aim  at  conscious  knowledge  in  contrast 
both  with  "learned  ignorance"  and  with  "intellectual  intui- 
tion;" and  it  will  proclaim  the  doctrine  of  a  progressive 
science,  in  opposition  at  once  to  a  "prudent  nescience,"  and 
to  a  fanciful  omniscience.  It  will  neither  affect  to  know 
nothing,  nor  assume  to  know  everything;  but  only  seek  ever 
to  know  more  and  more.  It  will  be  the  philosophy  of 
undying  hope,  as  separated  not  less  from  presumption  than 
from  despair,  and  of  rational  faith  as  superior  alike  to 
credulity  and  to  unbelief.  It  may  take  for  its  watchword  not 
merely, "  Crede,  ut  intelligas,"  nor  solely,  "  Intellige  ut  credas," 
but  simply  both  maxims  in  one,  "Fides  qua^rens  Intellectum: 
3-U 


554  The  Final  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

Intellectus  quaerens  Fidem"  (Faith  seeking  Knowledge: 
Knowledge  seeking  Faith).  And  it  might  find  its  symbol 
not  m  the  Egyptian  obelisk  towering  with  hieroglyphic  secrets 
towards-  the  Infinite,  nor  yet  in  the  Greek  pediment,  cowering 
with  its  sculptured  gods  in  the  Finite;  but  rather  in  that 
resultant  expression  of  both  Finite  and  Infinite,  blending  and 
rising  together  in  the  Christian  spire. 

We  may  even  begin  to  project  in  outline  its  issuing 
system.  We  can  discern  signs  of  commencing  organization, 
thoughout  the  whole  existing  mass  of  knowledge,  divine  and 
human.  Already  many  of  the  chief  authorities  in  each 
science  may  be  cited  as  the  witnesses  and  harbingers  of  its 
essential  and  prospective  harmony  with  religion ;  already  its 
clearly  ascertained  facts  are  in  proved  agreement  with  its 
plainly  revealed  truths ;  already  its  opposing  hypotheses  may 
be  provisionally  adjusted  to  its  conflicting  dogmas;  and 
already  its  growing  marvels  seem  to  rival  its  former  miracles. 
The  sciences,  one  after  another,  are  returning  from  their  re- 
searches, as  if  to  do  religious  homage,  and  receive  religious 
sanction. 

Astronomy  has  come  with  such  illustrious  witnesses  as 
Copernicus,  who  craved  in  his  epitaph  no  other  grace  than 
that  vouchsafed  the  penitent  thief  on  the  cross ;  Kepler, 
whose  rapturous  Eureka  was  a  declaration  that  he  could  wait 
a  century  for  readers,  since  the  Almighty  had  waited  thou- 
sands of  years  for  a  discoverer ;  Newton,  who  literally  studied 
the  law  of  the  Lord  in  both  His  Word  and  works,  and  kindled 
the  very  mathematics  of  the  Principia  into  praise ;  and  the 
Herschels,  father  and  son,  whose  tomb  still  proclaims  how 
onQ  generation  shall  show  the  works  of  Jehovah  to  another. 
Devout  astronomers  for  centuries  have  been  building  celestial 
physics  upon  natural  theology  as  their  only  rational  basis,  and 
illustrating  with  growing  proof  the  immensity,  eternity, 
omnipotence,  omnipresence  and  immutability  of  Him  who 
hath  established  His  faithfulness  in  the  heavens,  and  gar- 
nished them  by  His  Spirit.  If  some  of  them,  with  pious 
intent,  have  renounced  the  theory  of  the  nebular  origin  and 
destiny  of  suns  and  planets,  yet  others,  like  Madler,  Whewell 
and  Mitchell,  with  equal  faith,  have  accepted  it  as  but  the 


CHAP.  IV.]  Theory  of  Perfectible  Science.  555 

method  of  that  Divine  wisdom  which  prepared  the  heavens 
of  old,  and  shall  yet  cause  them  to  vanish  like  smoke,  and  be 
no  more.  No  miraculous  pause  of  the  sun  in  his  course  could 
be  more  wonderful  than  the  stupendous  motions  of  the  solar 
system  itself  No  single  new  star  in  the  East  can  seem  more 
incredible  than  the  countless  galaxies  which  have  since  been 
discovered.  The  spectral  light  of  other  worlds  is  beginning 
to  fall,  like  a  new  revelation,  upon  the  whole  question  of  the 
heavenly  state  and  destiny,  and  their  etherial  vibrations  may 
yet  thrill  with  magnetic  thought  and  sympathy  in  those  pre- 
dicted new  heavens,  wherein  dwelleth  righteousness. 

Geology  has  brought  such  great  names  as  Robert  Boyle,  a 
founder  of  the  Royal  Society  and  of  the  first  apologetic  lec- 
tureship, who  never  mentioned  the  name  of  God  without  a 
reverent  pause ;  John  Ray,  the  first  to  unite  natural  history 
with  natural  theology;  Cuvier,  who  fancied  himself  bidden, 
like  the  prophet,  to  evoke  the  dry  bones  of  buried  nature  into 
life ;  and  Ritter,  who  avowedly  wrote  his  magnificent  work  as 
his  song  of  praise  to  God.  Hosts  of  believing  physicists  have 
sought  rational  foundation  and  cement  for  the  whole  terrestrial 
system  in  the  power,  wisdom  and  goodness  of  the  Creator  as 
displayed  by  His  manifold  works  in  all  the  earth.  While  a 
few  of  them  may  still  doubt  the  accordance  of  the  new  geo- 
logy with  Genesis,  the  many,  with  Hugh  Miller,  Dana,  and 
Guyot,  are  seeking  to  identify  the  long  cosmogonic  eras  with 
the  six  days  wherein  God  made  heaven  and  earth  and  all  that 
in  them  is.  The  former  deluge  and  the  coming  conflagration 
may  be  more  dramatic  but  are  not  more  real  marvels  than  the 
glacial  and  igneous  epochs  for  which  many  geologists  would 
plead.  Ships  now  carry  to  our  antipodes  that  Divine  Word 
which  was  once  held  to  deny  their  existence,  or  consign  them 
to  the  nether  world  of  the  lost.  While  all  physical  geography 
attests  the  curse  upon  the  ground  for  man's  sake,  all  political 
geography  is  steadily  revealing  the  predicted  new  earth  when 
the  desert  shall  blossom  as  the  rose. 

Anthropology  has  been  yielding  such  high  authorities  as 
Linnaeus,  who  declared  that  he  stood  mute  with  amazement 
at  the  inconceivable  Divine  wisdom  displayed  through  all 
living  nature;    Roget,  Prout,   and    Bell,  who    devoted  their 


556  The  Final  Philosophy.  [part  11. 

great  names  and  attainments  to  the  high  argument  for  a  God ; 
Prichard  and  Agassiz,  who  ever  included  the  Scriptures 
among  the  sources  of  scientific  information ;  and  the  numer- 
ous missionary  ethnologists,  linguists,  and  antiquarians  who 
have  become  authorities  in  science  as  well  as  martyrs  to  their 
faith.  Though  as  yet  the  mass  of  devout  physiologists  may 
repudiate  the  very  notion  of  a  secular  evolution  of  human 
from  animal  species,  yet  there  are  some  already  querying,  with 
Mivart,  Henslow,  and  Peabody,  if  it  be  not  the  true  scientific 
explanation  of  the  manner  in  which  God  formed  man  out  of 
the  dust  of  the  earth  ere  He  breathed  into  him  a  living  soul. 
Whether  the  human  family  be  of  one  race  or  many  races,  the 
first  Adam  and  the  second  Adam  would  still  be  their  chief 
moral  representatives.  The  confusion  of  tongues  at  Babel 
and  their  miraculous  fusion  at  Pentecost  cannot  present 
greater  difficulties  than  the  complicated  problem  of  the  origin 
and  destiny  of  languages.  The  new  Christian  humanity 
already  begins  to  put  all  things  under  its  feet.  Vaccination 
and  chloroform  are  mitigating  the  curse  of  disease  and 
pain ;  the  industrial  arts  are  beating  the  sword  into  the 
ploughshare ;  and  as  man  subdues  the  wild  earth,  the  lion 
may  yet  lie  down  with  the  lamb  in  a  paradise  regained. 

Psychology  has  been  founded  by  such  religious  thinkers  as 
Descartes,  who  claimed  the  title  of  defender  of  the  faith ; 
Hartley,  who  wrote  a  tract  on  the  truth  of  the  Christian  reli- 
gion ;  Kant,  who  adored  God  in  the  moral  law  within,  not 
less  than  in  the  starry  heavens  above;  Hamilton,  whose  motto 
was  that  on  earth  there  is  nothing  great  but  man  and  in  man, 
nothing  great  but  mind;  and  the  long  line  of  speculative  di- 
vines who  have  become  eminent  in  logic,  ethics  and  aesthetics 
as  well  as  in  all  pure  living  and  sound  doctrine.  Not  only 
have  they  been  gathering  fresh  evidence  of  the  moral  attri- 
butes of  God  from  the  phenomena  of  reason  and  conscience; 
but  they  have  also  begun  to  base  the  peculiar  doctrines  of 
grace  upon  ascertained  mental  laws  in  the  mind  of  the  flesh  as 
well  as  of  the  spirit.  If  most  of  them  utterly  repudiate  the  new 
hypothesis  of  a  gradual  evolution  of  force  into  will,  sense  into 
thought,  and  matter  into  mind,  yet  there  are  signs  that  a  few 
are  getting  ready  to  reconcile   it  with  the   doctrine   of  the 


CHAP.  IV.]  Theory  of  Perfectible  Science.  557 

growth  of  the  new  creature  in  the  grace  and  knowledge  of 
Christ.  Whether  man  be  a  necessary  or  a  free  agent,  he  is 
held  both  by  Scripture  and  by  Nature  to  be  responsible  for 
his  acts.  The  miraculous  gifts,  revelations  and  conversions  of 
the  apostolic  age  are  not  half  so  incredible  as  the  analogous 
claims  and  beliefs  of  millions  at  the  present  day.  Some 
scientific  persons  are  such  believers  in  the  future  life  of 
the  soul  that  they  profess  to  have  gained  the  most  strangely 
minute  information  concerning  it.  No  predicted  marvels  of 
the  resurrection  can  now  seem  to  us  greater  than  the  extant 
wonders  of  the  heliotype,  the  telegraph  and  the  spectroscope. 
As  the  psychic  powers  of  man  are  unfolded,  he  is  strangely 
coming  into  ethereal  relations  with  things  unseen  and  eternal, 
and  may  begin  to  imagine  how  the  glorified  spirit  might  be 
more  gloriously  transfigured  and  appareled  than  the  Raphaels 
and  Gabriels  of  devout  fancy. 

Sociology  may  be  said  tohave  been  heralded  by  such  devout 
civilians  as  Grotius,  the  author  of  the  first  modern  treatise  en 
the  Christian  evidences,  and  Vico  who  cherished-  an  unwaver- 
ing religious  faith  in  the  midst  of  calumny,  disease  and  death  ; 
as  well  as  by  such  intelligent  divines  as  Bossuet,  the  Eagle  of 
Meaux,  who  surveyed  as  from  a  lofty  peak  the  whole  panora- 
ma of  universal  history,  and  Jonathan  Edwards,  who,  at  a  still 
diviner  height,  beheld  the  vast  scheme  of  human  redemption 
from  its  rise  in  the  kindling  morn  of  creation  to  its  setting  in 
the  gorgeous  pageant  of  the  judgment.  While  most  sacred 
historians  have  hitherto  rejected  the  idea  of  a  spontaneous 
development  of  society,  with  ever  growing  arts,  sciences  and 
polities,  yet  a  few,  in  a  more  scientific  spirit,  have  sought  to 
conceive  of  the  whole  divine  economy  as  proceeding  from  small 
beginnings,  like  the  branching  tree  from  a  mustard  seed,  or 
the  mighty  forest  from  a  handful  of  corn.  Whatever  abstract 
views  may  be  held  as  to  the  compatibility  of  great  social  laws 
with  Divine  sovereignty  and  human  freedom,  it  is  certain  that 
the  two  agencies  do  actually  concur,  as  a  smaller  within  a 
larger  sphere,  in  the  whole  process  of  history.  The  signs  and 
wonders  which  marked  the  origin  and  early  progress  of  the 
Church  may  not  be  more  miraculous,  in  the  view  of  all  hea- 
venly principalities  and  powers,  than  the  moral  triumphs  with 


558  The  Final  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

which  it  is  still  wrestling  against  the  rulers  of  the  darkness  of 
this  world;  and  as  it  ever  marches  onward,  appropriating  and 
transforming  the  whole  accompanying  civilization,  blending 
culture  with  faith,  and  resolving  art  into  worship,  it  may  yet 
burst  upon  the  world  with  such  a  universal  social  regenera- 
tion as  shall  more  than  realize  the  Utopia  of  the  philanthropist 
in  the  millennium  of  the  prophet. 

Theology  has  been  espoused  and  defended  by  such 
scientific  theists  as  Nieuwentyt,  the  Religious  Philosopher, 
who  dropt  that  illustrative  watch  upon  which  Paley  stumbled 
eighty  years  afterwards;  Leibnitz,  whose  Theodicea  was 
designed  to  harmonize  reason  and  faith;  Samuel  Clarke, 
Berkeley,  and  Butler,  who  laid  a  basis  for  the  Evidences  of 
the  Christian  religion  in  the  metaphysical,  physical  and 
psychical  sciences;  to  say  nothing  of  the  more  professional 
divines  of  every  age  and  school  who  have  striven  to  incorpo- 
rate the  whole  existing  rational  theology  with  the  revealed,  in 
one  compact  body  of  truth.  ]\Iany  of  them  may  not  even 
have  imagined  a  natural  history  of  religion,  such  as  the 
scientific  theologians  are  advocating,  yet  Bishop  Butler  long 
ago  suggested  that  the  entire  historic  development  of  the 
Christian  scheme  of  redemption  may  be  as  natural  as  the 
visible  known  course  of  things.  The  divine  insignia  by 
which  it  has  ever  distinguished  itself  from  the  other  religions 
of  the  world,  may  be  only  enhanced  as  it  steadily  proceeds  to 
reject  their  errors  and  absorb  their  truths,' until  at  last  it  shall 
stand  forth  as  the  one  absolute  and  universal  religion,  the 
faithful  and  accepted  gospel  of  the  Saviour  of  mankind. 

Philosophy  herself,  from  the  earliest  time,  has  been  gather- 
ing in  her  train,  as  forerunners  of  her  own  sacred  ideal,  such 
fathers  of  Christian  science  as  Justin,  who  was  styled  the 
Philosopher  and  the  Martyr;  Clement  of  Alexandria,  who 
first  solved  in  Christianity  the  problems  of  Plato;  and  St. 
Augustine,  who  first  defended  it  with  the  logic  of  Aristotle : 
such  scholars  of  Christian  science  as  John  Scotus  Erigena, 
who  declared  that  true  philosophy  and  true  religion  are  one; 
Albertus  Magnus,  so  called  because  he  was  great  in  physics, 
greater  in  metaphysics,  greatest  In  theology;  and  Roger 
Bacon,  the  saint   and    the  martyr  as  well  as  the  physicist : 


CHAP.  IV.]  Thcojy  of  Perfectible  Science.  559 

such  reformers  of  Christian  science  as  Francis  Bacon,  who 
freed  natural  philosophy  from  scholastic  bondage;  Bishop 
Butler  who  brought  religion  into  analogy  with  the  course  of 
nature;  and  after  these  great  leaders  their  countless  followers 
who  ever  since  have  been  striving  to  bridge  over  or  close  up 
the  yawning  chasm  between  science  and  faith.  If  some  ex- 
cellent divines  have  at  times  denounced  all  philosophy  as 
vain  and  deceitful,  like  that  which  prevailed  at  Corinth,  yet 
others  with  St.  Paul  and  Calvin  have  been  able  to  distinguish 
between  the  philosophy  that  is  sound  and  truthful  and  one 
that  is  after  the  rudiments  of  this  world  and  not  after  Christ. 
And  though  many  have  begun  to  despair  of  such  a  true 
Christian  philosophy  as  but  a  fanciful  ideal  of  the  fathers  and 
the  schoolmen,  yet  a  few  can  only  see  in  each  successive  failure 
a  nearer  approach  to  success,  and  still  yearn  with  growing  faith 
and  hope  after  the  riches  of  the  full  assurance  of  knowledge. 
No  beatific  vision  or  millennial  apocalypse  of  truth  can  seem 
too  mystical  or  miraculous  to  follow  the  brilliant  intellects 
and  growing  sciences  that  for  ages  have  been  anticipating  and 
heralding  it.  Already  the  divine  wisdom  revealed  in  Scripture 
has  been  found  congruous  with  that  discovered  in  Nature,  and 
the  marvellous  knowledge  hitherto  attending  their  separate 
growth  and  increase  only  helps  us  to  imagine  with  what 
enhanced  splendor  they  shall  pour  their  blended  rays  upon 
the  world. 

Nor  could  there  be  conceived  a  problem  more  sublime  and 
momentous  than  that  which  thus  still  remains  to  be  solved. 
To  ascertain  the  respective  spheres,  prerogatives,  and  methods 
of  human  reason  and  divine  revelation ;  to  adjust  their  re- 
ciprocal relations  on  principles  binding  upon  the  adherents 
of  both ;  to  apply  such  principles  throughout  the  sciences  to 
all  pending  controv^ersies,  with  the  view  of  sifting  error  from 
truth ;  to  gather  by  this  means  evidence  of  a  growing  har- 
mony between  the  two  great  bodies  of  knowledge,  as  they  ac- 
cumulate and  advance,  supporting,  interpenetrating,  and  illus- 
trating each  other;  in  a  word,  to  gradually  heal  that  immense 
schism  which  for  centuries  has  been  stealthily  invading  the 
most  cherished  opinions  and  interests  of  mankind,  and  thence- 
forward to  link  the  divine  and  the  human    reason,  in  their 


560  The  Final  Philosophy.  [part  ii. 

joint  process  through  coming  ages,  against  all  earthly  error 
and  sin, — these  are  objects  which  have  only  to  be  stated  in 
order  to  be  felt  in  all  their  moral  value  and  grandeur.  They 
are  not  the  transient  concerns  of  any  calling,  sect,  or  party, 
but  the  lasting  and  catholic  interests  of  humanity.  And 
though  no  single  mind  or  generation  may  achieve  them,  yet 
the  bare  conception  and  attempt  would  themselves  be  their 
own  sufficient  reward.  To  be  simply  living  at  a  time  when 
such  an  ideal  is  but  beginning  to  dawn  among  men,  must 
seem  to  one  who  rises  to  its  full  comprehension,  the  richest 
boon  that  has  yet  been  conferred  upon  them,  and,  in  the  first 
joy  of  its  discovery,  he  might  almost  tremble  lest  it  be  too 
good  and  glorious  ever  to  become  real,  or  through  some  fault 
or  want  in  nature,  should  fall  short  of  fulfillment,  could  he  not 
find,  on  surveying  the  scale  and  resources  of  creation,  that 
the  order  of  the  world  is  not  less  fixed  than  is  its  progress 
sure. 

Viewed  in  one  light,  such  questions  are  indeed  suited  to 
daunt  the  most  reckless  speculation.  What  mortal  wisdom 
can  reap  two  such  vast  fields  of  knowledge,  or  bind  into 
sheaves  such  varied  harvests  of  truth!  How  jealous  is  reason 
of  faith,  and  faith  of  reason !  And  how  warily  must  either 
venture  within  the  bounds  of  the  other!  To  link  the  jarring 
sciences,  material  and  moral,  rational  and  revealed,  into  one 
series,  by  one  method,  and  to  one  aim  ;  to  organize  a  true 
hierarchy  in  this  present  anarchy  of  knowledge,  divine  and 
human, — this  is  no  mere  wordy  pastime  of  philosophers,  but 
an  arduous  task  from  which  all  earnest  souls  would  but  shrink 
in  proportion  as  they  comprehend  it. 

Viewed  in  another  light,  however,  such  questions  only 
nerve  while  they  tempt  our  curiosity.  What  a  mass  of  human 
interests  hangs  upon  their  issue  !  What  a  medley  of  human 
opinions  is  involved  in  their  solution  !  How  all  human  duty 
and  destiny  concentrate  in  the  problem  of  reconciling  the 
finite  with  the  Infinite  reason !  and  how  all  human  history 
points  to  the  goal  where  science  returns  into  Omniscience,  the 
earth  becomes  subject  to  man,  and  man  to  God !  The  unity 
of  nature  and  Scripture,  the  marriage  of  reason  and  faith,  the 
perfection  of  knowledge,  the  triumph  of  art,  the  regeneration. 


CHAP.  IV.]  Theory  of  Perfectible  Science.  561 

of  society, — these,  in  their  order,  are  linked  ideals  of  pro- 
phecy and  philosophy,  which  at  once  overawe  and  charm  us 
into  an  enthusiasm  that  must  grow  in  fervor  as  it  grows  in 
humility  and  caution. 

"And  here,"  said  the  greatest  of  philosophers,  after  a  like 
argument,  "  I  cannot  but  reflect  how  appositely  that  answer 
of  Thcmistocles  may  be  applied  to  myself  which  he  made  to 
the  deputy  of  a  small  village  haranguing  upon  great  things, 
'  Friend,  thy  words  require  a  city.'  For  so  it  may  be  said  of 
my  views  that  they  require  an  age,  perhaps  a  whole  age,  to 
prove,  and  numerous  ages  to  execute.  But  as  the  greatest 
things  are  owing  to  their  beginnings,  it  will  be  enough  for  me 
to  have  sown  for  posterity,  and  the  honor  of  the  Immortal 
Being,  whom  I  humbly  entreat,  through  His  Son,  our  Saviour, 
favorably  to  accept  these,  and  the  like  sacrifices  of  the  human 
understanding,  seasoned  with  religion,  and  offered  up  to  His 
glory ! " 


3-v 


CHAPTER    V. 


PHILOSOPHIA    ULTIMA: 

PROJECT  OF  THE  PERFECTED   SCIENCES  AND 

ARTS. 


Whoever  will  survey  the  present  state  of  human  know- 
ledge, will  at  first  be  amazed  at  its  vast  extent,  its  rapid 
increase,  and  the  grandeur  of  the  monuments  with  which  it  is 
filling  the  world.  On  every  side  he  will  behold  the  fables  of 
mythology  turned  into  facts,  and  the  marvels  of  prophecy 
passing  into  history  before  his  eyes.  He  may  even  fancy  all 
that  he  now  witnesses  in  science  and  art  to  be  but  like  the 
mighty  preparations  for  a  future  building  whereof  only  the 
foundations  have  been  laid,  while  the  superstructure  as  yet  is 
scarcely  conceived.  But  no  sooner  shall  he  turn  from  his  ideal 
temple  of  knowledge  in  search  of  actual  workers  to  fashion 
and  frame  it  together,  than  he  will  be  shocked  to  find  them 
wrangling  in  bitter  feuds  over  their  task,  or  toiling  apart 
without  plan  and  concert,  or  rallying  confusedly  to  the  work, 
or  scattering  from  it  in  chagrin  and  despair,  until  they  seem 
to  him  like  the  infatuated  builders  on  the  plains  of  Shinar, 
confounded  by  the  anger  of  Heaven  in  the  midst  of  some 
impious  labor.  And  he  will  be  ready  to  fancy  that  the  genius 
of  human  philosophy  is  but  doomed  to  sit  down  and  weep 
amid  the  magnificent  ruins  of  a  work  which  she  had  begun 
but  could  not  finish. 

Then  let  him  turn  from  the  present  and  take  coimsel  with 
the  past.  History  will  lie  spread  out  beneath  him  like  a  vast 
quarry  wrought  by  successive  generations,  and  already  strewn 
562 


CHAr.  v.]  Projected  Sciences  and  Arts.  563 

with  frag.nentary  truths,  which  are  as  the  chiseled  stones  of  a 
structure  hitherto  without  model  even  in  the  fancy  of  the 
builders,  as  they  wrought  apart  each  at  his  own  task;  but 
now,  at  last,  the  plan  of  the  Divine  Architect  is  to  be  dis- 
played, the  master-workmen  in  each  science  marshalled,  and 
the  perfect  temple  of  knowledge  reared,  to  the  glory  of  God 
and  for  the  good  of  mankind. 

This  mature  effort  and  final  task  of  the  human  mind  may 
be  anticipated  under  the  name  of  the  Ultimate  Philosophy,  or 
that  last  summative  science  which  is  to  be  the  fruit  and  goal 
and  crown  of  all  the  sciences,  as  well  as  the  means  of  their 
highest  use  and  grandeur.  Before  the  cognitive  instinct  can 
be  satisfied,  and  the  mass  of  knowledge  rendered  exact,  co- 
herent, and  operative,  the  sciences  themselves  must  be  made 
the  subject  of  science ;  must  become  the  material,  as  well  as 
instrument,  of  research,  and-  their  product,  like  other  phaeno- 
mena,  be  brought  within  the  sphere  of  rational  prevision  and 
control.  If  we  could  imagine  them  perfected  singly  and 
apart,  there  would  still  remain  the  work  of  bringing  them. into 
logical  connection,  organizing  them  as  a  compact  system,  and 
concentrating  them  intelligently  upon  the  social  well-being  ; 
but  this  work  really  enters  into  their  growth  as  well  as  frui- 
tion, and  is  so  essential,  they  may  as  little  thrive  without  it 
as  branches  severed  from  a  common  tree.  To  discover  these 
vital  relations  among  them,  to  arrange  them  in  their  normal 
order,  to  distinguish  their  kinds,  measure  their  resources, 
ascertain  the  laws  of  their  evolution  and  interaction,  and  at 
length  frame  a  theory  by  means  of  which  their  whole  historic 
procedure  may  not  only  be  reviewed  and  foreseen,  but  itself 
corrected,  guided,  and  matured, — this  is  the  ideal  of  the 
ultimate  philosophy.  Itself  the  latest  offspring  of  science, 
equipped  with  all  means  and  modes  of  knowledge,  it  aims  to 
traverse  the  entire  domain  of  intelligence,  everywhere  sifting 
the  known  from  the  unknown,  and  gathering  the  fragments 
of  truth  into  an  intelligible  and  consistent  Avhole.  It  is,  in  a 
word,  that  science  of  science  which  science  itself  shall  yield, 
and  wherefrom  are  to  be  shed  upon  the  world  the  full  flower 
and  fruitage  of  reason. 

The   conception,  the    necessity,  the    utility,  the    rise   and 


564  Philosopliia  Ultima.  [part  ii, 

growth,  and  the  method  of  this  ultimate  philosophy  are 
topics  which  admit  of  enlarged  treatment  hereafter.  Three 
great  works  are  included  in  its  project  as  the  tasks  of  the  pre- 
sent and  "coming  generations:  ist.  Its  construction  out  of  the 
sciences  ;  2d.  Its  application  to  the  sciences  ;  3d.  Its  consum- 
mation of  the  sciences.  We  here  simply  propound  them  as 
themes,  condensing  into  sentences  what  might  be  expanded 
into  volumes. 

The  work  of  constructing  the  ultimate  philosophy  must 
begin  with  an  Expurgation  of  the  Sciences.  By  this  is  meant 
the  sifting  from  them  of  those  prejudices,  physical,  meta- 
physical, and  theological,  (the  idola  of  Bacon),  which  are  the 
offspring  of  their  own  rank  growth  and  schismatic  culture, 
and  which  now  hinder  direct  access  to  the  whole  body  of 
knowledge  as  it  lies  scattered  among  the  different  professions 
and  in  various  departments  of  learning.  When  the  eye  of 
reason  is  thus  purged  of  all  films  of  conceit  and  passion,  and 
the  prospect  cleared  of  every  mist  and  cloud  of  error,  it  will 
be  ready  to  embrace  in  one  view  the  whole  field  of  truth,  of 
whatever  sort  and  wherever  found. 

The  next  step  will  therefore  be  this  Survey  of  the  Sciences, 
or  particular  examination  of  their  several  provinces  and  pro- 
ducts. This  will  include  the  history  and  description  of  each 
species,  and  a  consequent  classification  or  arrangement  of 
them,  which  shall  be  accurate,  complete,  and  consistent, 
which  shall  neither  degrade  the  physical  sciences  as  in  Ger- 
man philosophy,  nor  the  metaphysical  as  in  English  philo- 
sophy, nor  the  theological  as  in  French  philosophy,  but 
annexing  the  physical  to  the  metaphysical,  and  complement- 
ing both  with  the  theological,  shall  exhibit  them  together  in 
the  order  of  nature,  of  history,  of  reason,  and  of  sound  cul- 
ture. They  will  thus  be  fully  digested  and  prepared  as  the 
material  of  induction,  or  as  the  intellectual  phrenomcna  to  be 
studied  and  explained. 

It  will  then  remain  to  frame  a  Theory  of  the  Sciences,  or 
doctrine  of  perfect  knowledge.  This  will  result,  like  every 
Bound  theory,  from  combined  conjecture  and  induction  ;  will 
embrace  all  the  facts  both  of  the  nature  and  of  the  history  of 


CHAP,  v.]  Projected  Sciences  and  Arts.  565 

human  intelligence;  and  will  be  verified  by  its  power  to 
revise  and  explain  the  whole  existing  product  of  science,  as 
well  as  to  previse  and  regulate  its  whole  subsequent  process. 
Concentrating  the  accumulated  experience  of  the  race  upon 
the  problem  of  philosophy,  it  will  neither  neglect  inquiry  into 
the  laws  of  phaenomena,  nor  ignore  inquiry  into  the  causes  of 
phaenomena,  nor  yet  detach  both  these  from  the  revelation  of 
the  ground  and  source  of  phaenomena ;  but  will  rather  com- 
bine revelation  and  reason  as  complementary  means  of  cogni- 
tion throughout  the  entire  realm  of  cognition,  and  so  aim  to 
resume  the  knowledge  of  laws  and  of  causes  in  the  know- 
ledge of  God,  that  only  First  and  Final  Cause  of  laws,  in 
whom  all  phaenomena  rest  and  move  with  perpetual  and  mani- 
fold reflection  of  His  glory. 

Thus,  according  to  a  true  doctrine  of  knowledge,  the 
sciences,  when  thoroughly  expurgated  and  surveyed,  may  be 
reduced  from  a  mere  medley  to  a  system  in  which  their  pro- 
cession shall  correspond  to  that  of  the  phaenomena  with  which 
they  are  concerned;  the  law  of  their  growth  shall  be  a  gra- 
dual coincidence  of  reason  and  revelation;  their  perpetual 
effort  shall  be  a  logical  review  of  the  Divine  Intelligence  by 
the  human  intelligence,  through  all  the  categories  of  fact,  from 
the  mathematics  in  which  the  universe  has  its  primordial 
root,  to  the  theology  in  which  it  finds  its  perennial  flower ; 
and  their  goal,  ever  to  be  approached  but  never  attained, 
shall  be  that  omniscience  wherewith,  looking  back  as  with 
the  eye  of  God  through  all  His  word  and  works  and  ways,  we 
shall  know  even  as  also  we  are  known. 

With  the  formation  and  verification  of  a  theory  of  the 
sciences,  the  work  of  constructing  the  ultimate  philosophy 
would  be  accomplished.  And  it  would  mark  the  utmost 
limit  of  human  cognition.  Reason  will  have  entered  its  last 
province  when  it  thus  retires  to  reflect  upon  its  own  product. 
The  speculative  propensity  will  have  attempted  its  crowning 
task  when  it  thus  seeks  the  law  of  its  own  action  and  clearly 
proposes  to  itself  the  ideal  of  its  own  conscious  aspiration. 
Science  will  have  no  other,  as  it  could  have  no  higher  aim, 
when  it  thus  strives  to  know  itself.  This  first  work  might 
therefore  be  called  the  science  of  the  sciences. 


566  Philosophia  Ultima.  [part  ii. 

But  if  we  now  suppose  such  a  theory  to  have  been  pro- 
pounded, we  would  not  be  content  to  cherish  it  as  a  mere 
toy  of  speculation  or  creature  of  the  philosophic  fancy,  but 
be  ready  to  return  with  it  among  the  sciences  from  which  it 
was  drawn,  and  apply  it  as  an  organ  of  their  further  culture, 
or  as  the  means  not  merely  of  observing  and  explaining,  but 
also  of  correcting  and  maturing  their  processes,  of  making 
the  imperfect  profit  by  the  mistakes  of  the  perfect,  and  giving 
them,  as  a  whole,  a  more  precise,  concerted  and  accelerated 
action.  In  other  words,  a  doctrine  of  the  cognitive  and  the 
cognizable  having  been  framed,  it  would  then  remain  to  bring 
the  former  systematically  to  bear  upon  the  latter. 

This  next  work  of  applying  the  ultimate  philosophy  would 
involve  the  preliminary  labor  of  a  logical  partition  of  the 
sciences  with  a  view  to  their  more  systematic  culture.  The 
arbitrary  divisions  and  assumptions  which  now  prevail  among 
them  not  only  dismember  the  body  of  truth,  but  lead  to  ill- 
directed  researches  and  strifes  of  words;  but  when  they  are 
cultivated  in  their  normal  order  and  with  reference  to  their 
ideal  unity,  their  growth  will  be  more  regular,  vigorous,  and 
fruitful.  Now,  according  to  our  theory,  their  normal  order 
corresponds  to  that  of  the  interdependent  phaenomena  which 
are  their  material;  and  their  ideal  unity  results  from  two 
opposite  modes  of  knowing  or  explaining  those  phaenomena, 
ever  tending  to  logical  union  in  a  third.  When,  therefore, 
we  have  thus  mapped  out  the  intellectual  domain  as  it  lies  in 
nature  itself  rather  than  in  our  crude  fancy,  we  may  proceed 
to  devise  three  corresponding  sets  of  logical  canons  or  rules 
for  the  three  kinds  of  intellectual  labor  to  be  performed 
therein. 

The  first  would  embrace  the  Logic  of  the  Empirical  Sciences, 
or  precepts  for  pursuing  and  perfecting  our  knowledge  of 
natural  laws.  They  will  be  of  various  classes:  i.  Those 
which  apply  to  nomological  science  in  general,  the  organon 
or  rationale  of  inductive  research.  2.  Those  which  apply  to 
the  physical  sciences  in  particular,  as  mechanics,  chemistiy, 
and  organics;  in  both  their  celestial  and  terrestrial  divisions. 
3.  Those  which  apply  to  the  psychical  sciences  in  particular. 


CHAP,  v.]  Projected  Sciences  and  Arts.  567 

as  psychology,  sociology  and  theology,  in  both  their  celestial 
and  terrestrial  divisions.  This  part  of  the  scientific  discipline, 
when  complete,  would  include  a  system  of  rules  for  con- 
necting every  class  of  facts  with  its  laws,  and  each  higher  law 
with  the  Highest. 

The  second  part  would  embrace  the  Logic  of  the  Metaphy- 
sical Sciences,  or  precepts  for  pursuing  and  perfecting  our 
knowledge  of  causes.  They  will  also  be  of  various  classes  : 
I.  Those  which  apply  to  teleological  science  in  general.  2. 
Those  which  hold  in  the  physical  sciences,  affording  the  evi- 
dences of  natural  religion.  3.  Those  which  hold  in  the  psychi- 
cal sciences,  affording  the  evidences  of  revealed  religion.  This 
part  of  the  scientific  discipline,  when  complete,  would  include 
a  system  of  rules  for  connecting  every  class  of  laws  with  its 
causes,  and  all  second  causes  with  the  one  great  First  Cause. 

The  third  part  would  embrace  the  Logic  of  the  Science  of  the 
Sciences,  or  precepts  for  maintaining  and  correlating  reason  and 
revelation  as  complemental  factors  of  knowledge  throughout 
both  the  empirical  and  the  metaphysical  realms  of  research. 
These,  too,  will  be  of  several  classes:  i.  Those  which  apply 
to  the  normal  relations  of  reason  and  revelation  in  the  scale 
of  the  sciences,  and  will  yield  us  an  ideal  of  perfect  knowledge, 
divine  and  human.  2.  Those  which  apply  to  the  present 
disturbed  relations  of  reason  and  revelation,  and  will  serve  to 
adjust  the  existing  scientific  and  religious  bodies  of  knowledge. 
3.  Those  which  apply  to  the  prospective  relations  of  reason 
and  revelation  in  the  sciences,  and  afford  evidence  of  their 
growing  harmony  and  inevitable  perfection.  This  third  and 
last  part  of  the  scientific"  discipline,  in  order  to  be  complete, 
would  include  a  system  of  rules  for  combining  all  laws  and 
causes  in  God,  the  Author  and  Ruler  of  the  universe,  the 
Alpha  and  the  Omega  of  creation,  from  whose  divine  reason 
it  has  logically  proceeded,  and  through  whose  infallible  reve- 
lation alone  can  it  be  logically  recapitulated. 

Thus  the  true  organon  of  knowledge,  whensoever  attained, 
will  rescue  the  cognitive  mind  from  those  irregular  and  con- 
flicting researches  with  which  it  is  now  blindly  sallying  over 
the  field  of  truth;  and,  everywhere  adjusting  the  system  of 
thought  to  the  system  of  things,  and  leading  the  finite  upon 


5<38  Philosopliia  Ultima.  [part  ii. 

the  track  of  Infinite  Reason,  will  slowly  realize,  through  end- 
less ages,  in  the  soul  of  the  creature,  for  the  glory  of  the 
Creator,  the  grand  ideal  of  the  whole  creation. 

By  means  of  such  a  complete  logic  of  the  sciences,  the  ul- 
timate philosophy  would  be  thoroughly  applied.  And  the 
discipline  of  the  human  intellect  would  then  be  perfect.  Rea- 
son will  have  become  a  faultless  instrument  of  research,  when 
it  thus  moves  by  a  trained  logic,  as  well  as  with  a  true  aim. 
Science  will  have  grown  to  be  its  own  master,  when  it  thus 
guides  as  well  as  knows  itself  This  second  work,  therefore, 
might  be  called  the  art  of  the  sciences. 

But  so  soon  as  we  imagine  such  a  scheme  of  axioms 
devised  and  employed  among  the  sciences,  we  shall  see  that 
the  tendency  will  be  not  merely  to  build  them  up  into  an 
ideal  system  as  for  philosophic  pastime,  but  to  effect  their 
logical  organization,  practical  equipment,  and  the  actual  en- 
dowing of  mankind  with  all  material  and  moral,  as  well  as 
intellectual  riches.  Such  is  the  connection  between  theory  and 
practice,  science  and  art,  truth  and  goodness,  that  whenever 
the  whole  cognitive  shall  have  thoroughly  acted  upon  the 
whole  cognizable,  there  must  issue  a  vast  and  homogeneous 
body  of  knowledge,  fraught  with  inconceivable  utility  and 
grandeur.  In  other  words,  the  science  of  the  sciences  and 
the  art  of  the  sciences,  will  need  to  be  crowned  with  a  science 
of  their  corresponding  arts,  or  doctrine  of  perfect  knowledge, 
as  practically  applied. 

This  third  and  last  work  of  consummating  the  ultimate 
philosophy  would  no  doubt  bring  with  itself,  in  its  initiatory 
stage,  a  clearer  and  more  general  apprehension  of  those  social 
laws  by  which  science  or  exact  knowledge  becomes  effective 
in  moulding  human  opinions  and  institutions.  So  long  as  the 
artificial  organization  of  society  proceeds  blindly,  its  action 
must  be  abnormal  and  wild;  but  when  the  intellectual  and 
moral  conditions  of  true  order  and  progress  are  demonstrated, 
we  may  at  least  foresee,  if  not  actually  hasten,  the  grand  issues 
of  the  whole  human  development  in  its  vital  connections  with 
all  terrestrial  and  even  celestial  influences. 

The  first  of  these  issues  may  be  termed  the  Ultimate  System 


CHAP,  v.]  ProJLxUd  Sciences  and  Arts.  569 

of  the  Sciences.     All   previous   organizations  of  the  body  of 
knowledge  share  in  its  existing  schismatic  and  fragmentary 
state.     Instead  of  building  the  temple  of  truth  after  the  model 
of  things,  they  exhibit   creation    but  as  a  disjointed  fabric, 
wrought  out  of  the  crude  and  composite  material  of  creature- 
fancy.     Instead  of  exactly  imaging  the    outer  world  of  fact 
into  the  inner  world  of  thought,  they  show  it  only  in  dim  and 
broken  reflection  as  marred  by  conceit  and  error.     But  when 
all  phaenomena  are  studied  in  their  actual  successions  and  co- 
existences, and  not  in  mere  detached  portions,  and  the  sciences 
are  partitioned  and    cultivated    accordingly,   as    an    organic 
whole,  then  will  the  chaos  which  the  universe  presents  to  the 
human  mind  be  changing  to  the  cosmos  which  it  presents  to 
the  divine  mind,  and  reason  be  fairly  embarked  in  her  career 
of  ever  nearing,  but  never  reaching  that  height  of  infinite  know- 
ledge, from  whence,  by  means  of  the  physical  sciences,  she 
could  review  and  forecast  all  material  life,  whether  of  atoms 
or  of  orbs,  and  by  means  of  the  psychical  sciences,  she  could 
review  and  forecast  all  spiritual  life,  whether  of  terrestrial  or 
celestial  races,     "  Now  we  see  through  a  glass   darkly,  but 
then  face  to  face ;  now  we  know  in  part,  but  when  that  which 
is  perfect  is  come,  that  which  is  in  part  shall  be  done  away." 
In  close  connection  with  this  issue  will  also  be  unfolded  the 
Ultimate  System  of  Arts.     At  present,  anything  like  a  more 
systematic  control  of  nature,  by  means  of  a  more  systematic 
knowledge   of  her  connected  laws,  is  scarcely  attempted   or 
even  so  much  as  deemed  open  to  human  aspiration.      As 
the    sciences,  broken  and  jarring,  extend   only  to   detached 
phaenomena,  without  including  their  vital  relations,  so  the  cor- 
responding arts,  or  means  of  modifying  those  phaenomena,  are 
in  like  manner  partial,  irregular,  and  conflicting.     The  frame 
of  nature  is  forced  to  work  in  piecemeal  for  her  still  unskillful 
master  ;  and  it  is  only  in  the  electric  telegraph  that  we  have  a 
hint  of  amore  cosmical  power.  But  when  the  sciences  are  more 
logicallyorganized,and  the  arts  begin  to  flow  from  them  as  fore- 
gone aims  rather  than  mere  incidental  trophies,  and  with  con- 
certed action  furthering  each  other,  then  will  our  increasing 
knowledge  be  ever  yielding  increasing  control  of  all  surround- 
ing  ph?snomcna,  and  man   be  rising  toward  the  predicted 

3-W 


570  Philo Sophia  Ultima.  [part  ii. 

dominion  over  creation.  Theology  will  be  giving  that  art  of 
religion  by  which  Providence  predominates  over  society,  and 
sociology  that  art  of  politics  by  which  society  predominates 
over  the  .individual,  and  psychology  that  art  of  ethics  by  which 
mind  predominates  over  matter,  and  biology,  chemistry  and 
mechanics,  those  arts  of  terrestrial  economy  by  which  the 
whole  material  system  is  wrought  anew  for  human  service 
and  divine  glory. 

And  last  of  all,  as  the  grand  aggregate  result,  there  will 
issue  the  Ultimate  System  of  Society.  In  a  philosophical  view, 
both  the  sciences  and  the  arts  are  but  functions  of  society, 
and  by  their  degree  of  perfection  determine  its  state  and  pro- 
gress. As  yet  the  most  advanced  civilization,  racked  and 
torn  by  conflicting  ideas  and  interests,  only  reflects  the  exist- 
mg  disorder  and  defectiveness  of  knowledge  and  consequent 
waste  and  turmoil  of  skill.  The  whole  modern  organization 
of  mankind  is  crude,  forced,  and  heterogeneous,  although 
already  an  immense  advance  upon  that  of  antiquity.  But 
when  the  seriate  sciences  shall  be  shedding  forth  their  seriate 
arts,  and  all  human  societies  be  growing  together  in  the 
knowledge  and  mastery  of  their  own  phaenomena,  and  of  the 
cosmical  phaenomena  upon  which  they  act,  until  they  are 
brought  into  harmony  with  nature  and  with  God,  then  will  a 
regenerate  race  be  installed  as  the  living  head  of  the  whole 
terrestrial  organism,  and  the  reins  of  the  orb  be  exultingly 
gathered  in  its  hands  as  it  careers  in  the  Olympic  race  of 
worlds. 

Then,  too,  may  even  the  celestial  sciences  begin  to  blossom 
with  celestial  arts  that  shall  knit  together,  in  spiritual  sympa- 
thy, all  celestial  races.  Terrene,  solar,  and  stellar  influences, 
wielded  by  human  prowess  and  prayer,  may  unfold  the  com- 
merce of  heaven,  the  telegraj^h  of  the  skies,  and  the  worship 
of  the  one  universal  Father,  until  the  ripe,  scient  earth  echoes 
back  the  anthem  that  erst  hailed  her  novitiate,  when  "  the 
morning  stars  sang  together  and  all  the  sons  of  God  shouted 
for  joy." 

Thus,  in  the  consummation  of  such  remote  issues,  will 
be  involved  the  consummation  of  all  things  earthly.  Science 
will    then    have    triumphed  over  error,  and  art  over  nature. 


CHAP,  v.]  Projected  Sciences  and  Arts.  57 1 

Reason  will  then  have  unfolded  the  whole  riddle  of  the  world 
from  its  genesis  to  its  apocalypse ;  and  that  cosmic  ideal 
towards  which  the  Creator  has  been  moving  through  mighty 
epochs  of  creation,  from  the  primordial  planetary  germ,  by 
means  of  successive  strata,  floras,  faunas,  and  human  nations 
and  races,  will  at  length  stand  forth  revealed  in  the  fullness  of 
its  life  and  glory. 

At  the  height  we  have  now  reached,  how  wide  the  horizon ! 
how  grand  the  prospect !  As  from  a  lone  eminence  of  faith, 
with  the  whole  past  and  present  and  future  of  our  race 
spread  out  at  one  view,  we  look  down  upon  that  divine  system 
of  the  world,  in  which  the  end  is  known  from  the  beginning. 
We  see  long  ages  rolling  onward  ere  it  shall  all  be  fulfilled, 
vast  literatures  and  civilizations  shed  like  forest  leaves  in  its 
fulfilling,  and  unspeakable  glories  crowding  thick  and  fast  to 
its  fulfillment,  until,  blinded  by  the  vision,  we  almost  wonder 
that  mortal  may  gaze  and  live.  But  we  will  not  doubt  His 
fatherly  goodness,  who,  having  shown  unto  His  human  chil- 
dren even  the  far-off  stars  in  their  destined  courses  and. peri- 
ods, will  surely  deign  not  less  that  they  should  scan  the  track 
of  His  earthly  promises,  and  give  them  some  Pisgah  where 
they  may  lie  down  and  die  content  that  other  generations 
shall  enter  into  that  for  which  they  have  toiled. 

And  hence  it  behooves  us  next  to  consider,  as  being 
our  part  in  the  scheme,  the  more  practical  questions  of 
the  time,  the  scene,   and    the  mode  of  its  inauguration. 

For  the  time  of  its  inauguration,  all  history  points  to  the 
present  age.  An  era  of  the  world,  so  fraught  with  mar- 
vels and  rife  in  great  rhovements,  might  well  be  crowned 
with  this  last  and  best  birth  of  time.  And  we  have  only  to 
review  the  past  and  survey  the  present  in  order  to  see  that 
what  could  not  hitherto,  may  at  last  now  be  hopefully 
attempted.  It  could  not  have  been  undertaken  at  any  pre- 
vious period,  because  the  two  reformations,  the  one  religious 
the  other  scientific,  of  which  Luther  and  Bacon  were  the 
leaders,  had  first  to  proceed  apart  to  their  extremes,  and  so 
develop  the  existing  need  of  their  combination.  At  their 
spring  and  while  in  their  incipiency,  neither  feared  nor  craved 
the  other.     Both  were  intent  only  upon  freeing  reason  from 


572  Philosophia  Ultima.  [part  ii. 

its  trammels,  whether  ecclesiastical  or  scholastic,  and  could 
not  then  foresee  its  present  license  and  discord,  or  the  necessity 
which  has  thus  arisen,  of  training  it  to  study  science  itself, 
with  the  same  directness,  patience,  and  candor,  wherewith  they 
trained  it  to  study  nature  and  Scripture. 

It  is  indeed  true  that  in  advance  of  the  exigency,  that 
majestic,  prescient  mind  which  planned  the  Instaiiratio 
Magna  would  seem  to  have  propounded  the  very  task  which 
is  now  imminent,  or  at  least,  so  much  of  it  as  relates  to  the 
natural  sciences,  though  with  no  real  expectation  of  seeing  it 
then  accomplished.  "  The  sixth  and  last  part  of  our  work,  to 
which  all  the  rest  are  subservient,  is  to  lay  down  that  philoso- 
phy which  shall  flow  from  the  just,  pure,  and  strict  inquiry 
hitherto  proposed.  But  to  perfect  this  is  beyond  both  our 
abilities  and  our  hopes ;  yet  we  shall  lay  the  foundations  of 
it  and  recommend  the  superstructure  to  posterity."  And  it  is 
now  easy  to  see  that  the  "  universal  and  complete  theory  " 
which,  with  just  forethought  he  pretended  not  to  offer,  could 
not  have  been  framed  or  even  attempted,  until  the  sciences 
should  have  reached  some  measure  of  perfection,  and  out  of 
their  own  lack  of  consistency  and  order  clamored  for  law  and 
system. 

But  now,  at  last,  this  need  and  preparedness  for  the  great 
effort  have  arrived.  If  we  examine,  we  shall  find  that  each  of 
the  three  works  here  projected  as  necessary  to  the  completion 
of  philosophy  may  at  least  be  begun,  if  not  pursued  to  a  good 
degree  of  forwardness. 

Have  we  not  already  the  materials  of  the  projected  theory 
or  doctrine  of  perfect  knowledge  ?  The  map  of  the  intel- 
lectual, like  that  of  the  physical  globe,  is  almost  complete, 
with  scarcely  a  terra  incognita  to  be  explored,  and  philosophy 
might  well  reach  her  ultima  thiile  in  conjunction  with  geogra- 
phy. In  other  words,  the  exact  limits  of  research  may  be 
said  to  have  been  ascertained  and  its  several  provinces  defined. 
All  the  sciences  at  least  have  a  name,  are  in  various  stages  of 
progress,  and  fast  coming  into  new  and  fruitful  relations.  At- 
tempts even  have  been  made  to  discover  and  impose  upon  them 
that  system  to  which  they  are  presumed  to  be  tending.  And 
if  such  forward  minds  have  hitherto  failed,  it  has  been  partly 


CHAP,  v.]  rrojccted  Sciences  and  Ai'ts.  573 

because  it  is  only  through  repeated  failures  we  can  pass  to 
success,  and  also  because  they  have  not  brought  to  their  task 
that  catholicity,  candor,  and  patience  which  are  the  cardinal 
virtues  of  the  philosophy  they  espouse,  but  have  allowed  some 
metaphysical  or  theological  prejudice  to  hinder  a  just  induc- 
tion, and  vainly  tried  to  force  upon  science,  as  the  old  scho- 
lastics tried  to  force  upon  nature  and  Scripture,  some  partial 
and  foregone  theory.  They  have  either  exscinded  the  know- 
ledge which  has  been  revealed  or  the  knowledge  which  has 
been  discovered,  and  so  announced  pretended  laws  of  scientific 
development  which  both  history  and  reason  falsify.  But  the 
very  fact  that  efforts  in  this  direction  are  put  forth,  and  that 
even  these  crude,  tentative  hypotheses  have  yielded  such 
brilliant  results,  augurs  the  full  success  that  is  at  hand.  After 
long  ages  of  philosophical  discipline  and  the  accumulation  of 
a  mass  of  sciences  extending  to  every  class  of  phasnomena, 
what  now  remains  but  that  the  inductive  spirit  should  return 
upon  its  own  intellectual  product,  in  search  of  that  sublime 
theory  of  cognition  which  is  to  be  its  crowning  triumph,  and 
at  length  set  forth  as  the  matured  reason  of  the  race  and  the 
destined  apex  of  the  pyramid  of  knowledge  ? 

Have  we  not  also,  in  large  measure,  the  means  of  framing 
the  projected  organon  of  perfect  knowledge  ?  The  cognitive 
mind,  now  grown  experienced  in  all  modes  of  research,  has 
already  garnered  a  store  of  principles  and  precedents  Avhere- 
with  to  enter  intelligently  and  authoritatively  the  more  imper- 
fect sciences,  and  preclude  the  waste  and  error  and  confusion 
which  marked  its  infancy.  Master-builders  in  the  art  of  con- 
structing science,  one  after  another,  have  tried  their  hand 
upon  the  model,  and  given  well-tested  rules  for  the  actual 
building.  In  inductive  philosophy  we  have  a  line  extending 
from  Bacon  to  Comte,  and  in  speculative  philosophy,  another 
from  Kant  to  Hegel ;  while  the  very  extreme  into  which  the 
two  latest  thinkers  have  pushed  their  respective  methods  has 
already  created  the  need  of  that  third  and  last  philosophy 
which  shall  mediate  between  them, and  lead  them  back  from 
their  errant  courses  within  the  just  and  safe  limits  which  they 
impose  upon  each  other.  Though  our  philosophical  litera- 
ture is  as  yet  wanting  in  this  latter  department  of  sciential 


574  Philosophia  Ultima.  [part  ii. 

thought,  and  there  exists  scarcely  a  treatise  which  can  com- 
mand the  equal  respect  of  both  sects  of  disciples,  those  of 
reason  and  those  of  revelation,  yet  there  is  a  craving  among 
each  after  the  laws  of  their  latent  affinity  and  the  terms  of 
their  ultimate  agreement.  Now  that  so  much  of  thorough 
drill  has  been  infused  among  the  different  votaries  of  science, 
who  doubts  but  that  the  logical  spirit  shall  soon  enter  also 
their  border  feuds,  and  at  length  devise  and  publish  those 
perfect  canons  of  research  by  which  the  whole  host  of  seekers 
for  truth  shall  be  marshalled  as  one  mighty  phalanx  for  the 
final  career  of  eternal  progression  ? 

And  may  we  not  even  begin  to  forecast  the  actual  scheme 
and  issue  of  perfect  knowledge  ?  Although  that  matured 
humanity  which  must  result  from  matured  intelligence  has 
hitherto  been  aspired  after  only  by  elect  minds,  as  but  a  vague 
ideal,  and  with  faint  presentiment ;  yet  now,  at  least,  the  pros- 
pect grows  clearer  and  surer,  and  thrills  even  the  popular 
heart.  By  a  few,  at  least,  the  vital  connection  between  society 
and  science  is  seen  to  insure  the  perfection  of  the  one  in  that 
of  the  other.  And  as  we  feel  that  pulse  of  humanity  which 
ever  beats  onward,  and  survey  the  wreck  of  systems  in  which 
fond  visionaries  have  sought  some  airy  tower  of  prospect,  we 
can  but  devoutly  hail,  even  if  still  afar  off,  the  dawn  of  that 
era  which  the  seers  and  saints  and  sages  of  all  time  have 
longed  to  see;  and,  entering  with  new  joyfulness  into  their 
sacred  prescience  and  prayer,  proceed  to  labor  as  well  as  yearn 
for  the  great  consummation. 

Thus  have  we  been  brought  to  that  fullness  of  time  when 
Providence  seems  waiting  to  give  the  reins  of  the  world  to 
ripe  reason,  and  is  summoning  us  to  enter  with  faith  and  hope 
upon  the  impending  task. 

For  the  scene  of  its  inauguration,  philanthropy  selects  the 
western  hemisphere.  A  clime  so  strangely  hidden  for  ages 
from  mankind,  would  seem  but  the  destined  theatre  of  these 
later  acts  of  history.  And  we  have  but  to  scan  the  map  of 
the  world  to  find  that  what  could  not  elsewhere  may  here  be 
practically  initiated. 

It  could  not  originate  in  the  eastern  hemisphere.  The  two 
diverse  civilizations — the  oriental  and  occidental — represent- 


CHAP,  v.]  Projected  Sciences  and  Arts.  575 

ing  the  practical  issues  of  the  two  diverse  philosophies — the 
intuitional  and  the  empirical — having  proceeded  apart  for  six 
thousand  years  on  opposite  sides  of  the  globe,  must  meet  as 
in  completed  circuit  on  some  virgin  soil  and  common  ground, 
ere  their  joint  mission  can  be  accomplished.  While  still  in 
their  native  seats,  neither  can  thoroughly  sift  and  appropriate 
the  other.  Both  are  there  hampered  by  inveterate  prejudices 
and  contracted  relations,  and  must  continue  to  have  something 
of  extravagance  in  their  development;  the  one  towards  mys- 
ticism, and  the  other  towards  scepticism ;  until  thrown  to- 
gether on  a  new  arena  where  they  can  find  ampler  scope  and 
freer  action. 

It  need  not,  indeed,  be  denied  that  in  European  civilization 
the  eastern  and  western  mind,  the  religious  and  scientific 
spirit  have  already  for  eighteen  centuries  been  combined ;  but 
this  very  combination  has  at  length  only  shown  an  exigency 
which  it  cannot  meet,  and  materials  which  it  cannot  use  upon 
its  own  soil.  The  rigid,  social,  national,  and  political  distinc- 
tions of  the  Old  World,  to  say  nothing  of  its  meagre  physical 
location  and  structure,  preclude  that  collection  and  fusion  of 
all  the  elements  of  humanity,  which  is  to  be  the  work  of  the 
true  cosmopolite  philosophy. 

But  in  this  western  hemisphere  not  only  are  such  elements 
far  more  varied  and  abundant,  but  the  facility  for  their  re- 
composition  is  perfect.  The  American  geography,  genealogy, 
politics,  and  religion  are  simply  unparalleled,  either  in  ancient 
or  modern  civilization,  and  together  form  an  aggregate  of  all 
that  is  peculiar  to  the  civilizations  of  Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa. 
Such  a  medley  of  climates,  of  races,  of  institutions,  of  creeds 
and  theories,  fusing  under  one  political  system,  affords  mate- 
rials for  a  philosophy  which  cannot  but  be  final ;  and,  by 
projecting  on  a  grander  scale  and  with  fuller  conditions,  all 
the  time-worn  issues  of  history,  shows  that  here,  if  anywhere, 
the  whole  terrestrial  problem  is  at  length  to  be  solved.  Who 
that  surveys  this  wide  intellectual  and  social  anarchy,  and  the 
swift  and  intense  passions  pervading  it,  but  must  feel  that 
sooner  or  later,  the  plastic  spirit  of  human  opinion  which,  ever 
strengthening  with  the  growth  of  reason,  has  wrought  through 
all  the  past,  disorganizing  and  reorganizing  successive  civiliza- 


$y6  Pldlosopliia  Ultima.  [part  ii. 

tions,  must  at  last  educe  order   from  this  chaos,  and  mould 
the  ideal  reign  of  truth  and  virtue  ? 

Thus  has  Providence  already  opened  and  garnished  the 
stage  whereon  to  unfold  that  consummate  system,  which,  as  it  is 
to  be  the  flower  of  all  thought  and  fruit  of  all  climes  and  ages, 
can  be  called  after  no  name,  however  worthy,  and  claimed  by 
no  people,  however  illustrious. 

For  the  mode  of  its  inauguration,  philosophy  ordains  the 
academic  curriculum.  The  educational  system,  as  the  primal 
fount  of  knowledge  and  influence  in  the  social  organism, 
affords  the  normal  method  of  turning  the  grand  ideal  into 
a  reality.  And  but  a  glance  at  the  existing  state  of  society 
will  show  that  it  alone  is  competent  to  the  task. 

There  is  an  obvious  unfitness  in  all  other  agencies.  The 
professions  and  the  press,  being  distributors  rather  than  con- 
tributors of  new  ideas,  and  reflectors  rather  than  manufactu- 
rers of  opinion,  as  well  as  liable  to  be  swayed  by  disturbing 
interests  and  passions,  are  too  low  down  in  the  scale  of  social 
influence  to  reach  the  springs  of  existing  evils.  A  movement 
which  is  to  cure  them  by  harmonizing  science  and  the- 
ology, must  originate  beyond  the  sphere  of  popular  prejudice, 
in  that  quiet  circle  of  thinkers  and  scholars  where  truth  is 
prized  for  her  own  sake,  and  sought  with  the  zeal  of  the 
votary.  The  tactics  and  the  drill  of  this  warfare  are  not  to  be 
learned  amid  the  smoke  of  battle,  by  the  mere  tyros  and 
bigots  who  are  in  such  haste  to  practice  them,  but  must  be 
brought  thither  by  those  who  have  been  schooled  into  philo- 
sophic tastes  and  habits. 

This  at  least,  it  may  be  safely  affirmed,  is  the  judgment  of 
intelligent  conservatives,  who  are  in  the  field  and  acquainted 
with  its  wants.  There  is  a  growing  feeling  throughout  the 
educated  classes  that  the  crisis  has  become  too  grave  to  be 
continued  as  a  mere  topic  of  periodical  review  or  theme  of 
professional  declamation.  What  pastor,  lawyer,  or  physician, 
if  he  has  the  time  or  taste,  is  competent  to  grapple  with  the  great 
question  in  any  of  its  branches  ?  He  encounters  at  once  the 
suspicion  of  having  got  beyond  his  province,  and  is  sure  of 
the  contempt  of  one  or  both  parties,  if  only  because  of  his 
supposed  unfitness  and  prejudice.      The   work    has   plainly 


CHAP,  v.]  Projected  Sciences  and  Arts,  577 

reached  the  importance  of  a  special  cause,  caiHng  for  special 
quahfications,  and  the  devising  of  new  apphances,  more  fixed 
and  organic  than  any  now  in  use. 

It  should  not  indeed  be  overlooked,  that  this  craving  has 
already  been  long  expressing  itself  in  a  rich  and  growing 
literature,  partly  in  the  interest  of  science,  and  partly  in 
the  interest  of  theology,  and  sometimes  by  the  institution  of 
prize-essays  and  lectureships,  which  are  directly  aimed  at  the 
work  of  their  conciliation ;  but  whatever  success  has  hitherto 
attended  such  scattered  and  irregular  efforts  only  lights  the 
way  to  others  that  may  be  more  direct,  lasting,  and  effective. 

It  is  by  means  of  academic  training  alone,  that  the  whole 
social  organism  can  be  reached  and  cured  of  its  present 
vicious  and  morbid  action.  The  true  university  is  its  brain, 
receiving  from  professorships  and  distributing  through  the  pro- 
fessions ideas  that  rule  the  masses ;  and  according  as  it  is 
sophisticated  or  purified  will  the  whole  body  be  depraved  or 
ennobled.  In  other  words,  we  have  only  to  recur  to  the  social 
evils  described  as  the  issue  of  the  great  schism  in  modern 
philosophy,  to  see  that  they  can  only  be  met  educationally, 
by  special  courses  of  study  and  instruction,  at  the  seats  of  cul- 
ture where  they  stealthily  and  unwittingly  originate  and  are 
often  unconsciously  harbored. 

It  is  there  that  we  must  seek  the  unity  of  science.  She 
gathers  thither  her  votaries  to  endow  them  with  her  riches, 
and  assign  them  their  tasks,  and  so  long  as  she  presents  but  a 
divided  front  and  ranges  them  in  opposite  ranks,  must  the 
breach  between  them  be  only  widened;  but  in  proportion  as 
both  the  rational  and  the  revealed  sciences  are  studied  in  their 
actual  connections,  and  brought  into  some  logical  relationship ; 
as  fast  as  the  former  are  made  to  illustrate  the  character, 
policy,  and  purposes  of  the  God  of  revelation  and  the  latter 
are  established  in  harmony  with  all  the  discoveries  of  reason, 
will  they  be  found  to  be  but  branches  from  one  root  of  know- 
ledge, living  and  growing  in  the  truth. 

It  is  there,  also,  we  must  seek  the  catholicity  of  learning 

and  the  communion  of  scholars.     From  thence  the  youthful 

mind,  while  forming  its  intellectual  habits,  and  ere  it  has  been 

narrowed  by  professional  prejudices,  receives  its  life-long  bias  ; 

3-x 


578  Philosophia  Ultima.  [part  ii. 

and  only  by  diverting  it,  from  its  present  tendencies  toward 
either  skepticism  or  bigotry,  can  the  whole  educated  class  be 
imbued  with  a  spirit  of  large  and  generous  culture. 

And  it  is  there,  too,  we  must  seek  a  salutary  influence  upon 
all  the  great  interests  of  religion,  politics  and  art.  Let  the 
salt  of  truth  be  cast  into  these  living  fountains,  and  the  stream 
of  intellectual  and  moral  corruption  will  be  cleansed ;  the 
evils  of  the  church,  the  state,  and  the  life  will  be  cured;  and 
a  current  of  new  and  vitalizing  ideas  poured  throughout  the 
whole  social  body.  Though  now  all  surrounding  civilization 
seems  based  in  error  and  ignorance  and  swayed  by  conflicting 
opinions  and  prejudices,  still  we  need  not  fear  but  that  the 
spirit  of  truth,  training  and  marshalling  her  votaries  in  such 
sequestered  haunts  of  culture,  shall  yet  lead  them  forth  as  a 
disciplined  host,  even  into  the  thick  of  this  great  conflict,  and 
there  proclaim  her  destined  rule  of  order,  law,  and  love. 

It  may  serve  to  give  more  definiteness  and  feasibility  to 
these  views  if  we  here  insert  a  scheme  of  academic  studi-es, 
based  upon  the  foregoing  project  and  arranged  with  reference 
to  the  existing  and  prospective  state  of  the  sciences. 

PART  I.— SCIENCE  OF  THE  SCIENCES. 

I.   EXPURGATION   OF  THE   SCIENCES. 

Misconceptions  as  to  the  origin,  value,  and  dignity  of  science. 

Of  science  as  the  function  of  the  social  or  collective  mind. 

Of  science  as  distinguished  from  ordinary  or  popular  knowledge. 

Of  science  as  distinguished  from  art. 

Of  science  as  distinguished  from  philosophy. 

Its  essential  unity  amid  artificial  divisions. 

Its  steady  progress  through  human  vicissitudes  and  adverse  influences. 

Various  popular,  professional,  and  philosophical  prejudices,  which  now  hinder 
the  unity  and  growth  of  the  sciences :  their  source  and  remedy. 

Various  intellectual  and  moral  qualifications  for  pursuing  the  sciences,  de- 
manded by  their  present  state. 

Conditions  and  resources  of  a  science  of  the  sciences. 

2.   SURVEY   OF  THE  SCIENCES. 

German,  French,  and  English  classifications  or  systems  of  the  sciences :  their 
merits  and  defects. 

Principles  of  the  true  system :  i.st  That  they  should  be  arranged  according 
to  the  actual  order  of  phenomena  as  co-existent  in  space,  the  celestial  in  con- 
nection with  the  terrestrial  mechanics,  chemistry,  organics,  ethics,  and  politics. 
2d.  That  they  should  be  combined  according  to  the  actual  order  of  pheno- 


CHAP,  v.]  Projected  Sciences  and  Arts.  579 

mena   as  successive  in  time,  the  material   preceding  the  spiritual,  in  a  series 
rising  from  the  simplest  physical  facts  to  the  most  complex  psychical  facts. 

By  still  farther  separating  them  into  abstract  and  concrete  groups,  we  get  the 
followmg  map  of  the  sciences,  with  its  bounded  provinces  and  known  and 
unknown  regions : 


Psychical. 


Abstract  Sciences. 

Concrete  Sciences. 

Religious. 

Theology. 

Celestial 

Social. 

Sociology. 

and 

■ 

Individual. 

Psychology. 

Terrestrial. 

Organical. 

Anthropology. ' 

Chemical. 

Geology. 

Mechanical. 

Astronomy. 

Physical. 


Characteristics  of  psychical  as  distinguished  from  physical  science. 

Characteristics  of  metaphysical  as  distinguished  from  empirical  science. 

Relative  advancement  of  the  sciences. 

Brief  summary  of  their  results :  in  the  expansion  of  the  intellect,  in  the  accu-, 
mulation  of  truth,  and  in  new  accessions  of  human  power,  dignity,  and  hap- 
piness. 

Their  need  and  readiness  for  some  logical  organization  and  more  systematic 
culture. 

3,   THEORY  OF  THE  SCIENCES,  OR   DOCTRINE   OF   COGNITION. 

(1)  Of  the  cognitive,  or  the  means  of  cognition. 

False  theories,  which  would  reject  either  reason  or  revelation,  or  would  de- 
range their  normal  relations. 

The  true  theory,  that  of  their  gradual  coincidence  and  ultimate  harmony. 

Foundation  for  this  theory  in  both  the  nature  and  the  history  of  the  human 
intellect. 

Its  accuracy  and  fitness. 

(2)  Of  the  cognizable,  or  the  material  of  cognition. 

False  theories,  which  would  ignore  either  the  causes  or  the  laws  of  pheno- 
nomena. 

The  true  theory,  that  which  would  be  cognizant  of  both  in  their  actual  co- 
existences and  successions,  and  claim  as  the  ideal  domain  of  science  the  whole 
aggregate  of  worlds  throughout  all  ages. 

Foundation  for  this  theory  in  both  the  structure  and  the  development  of  the 
universe. 

Its  completeness  and  grandeur. 

(3)  Of  the  cognitive  in  action  upon  the  cognizable,  or  the  process  of  cog- 
nition. 

False  theories,  which  would  either  confine  reason  to  terrestrial  and  material 
phenomena,  or  confine  revelation  to  spiritual  and  celestial  phenomena. 

The  true  theory,  that  which  would  combine  both  means  of  cognition  in  all 
fields  of  cognition  as  involving  a  joint  process  of  finite  and  infinite  intelligence 
throughout  immensity  and  eternity,  toward  the  goal  of  omniscience. 

Foundation  for  this  theory  in  the  relations  of  finite  and  Infinite  mind,  and  in 
the  history  of  the  human  sciences. 


580  Philosophia  Ultima.  [part  ii. 

Procession  of  the  sciences  in  correspondence  with  the  procession  of  phseno- 
mena,  as  involving  an  endless  revievi^  of  the  creation,  by  the  creature,  for  the 
glory  of  the  Creator. 

Ideal  perfectibility  of  knovi^ledge  as  contrasted  with  its  actual  imperfection. 

Means  and  motives  for  ever  striving  after  perfect  knowledge. 

PART  II.— ART  OF  THE  SCIENCES. 
Need  of  precepts  for  pursuing  and  perfecting  the  sciences,  with   a  view  to 
their  systematic  culture. 

1.  Inductive  Logic,  or  Organon  of  Empirical  Science. 

2.  Deductive  Logic,  or  Organon  of  Metaphysical  Science. 

3.  Synthetic  Logic,  or  Organon  of  Perfectible  Science. 

The  latter  embracing  the  following  scheme  of  rules  for  harmonizing  the 
rational  and  revealed  bodies  of  knowledge  : 

THE  NORMAL  STATE  OF  THE  SCIENCES. 

1.  In  each  science  reason  and  revelation  are  complemental  factors  of  know- 
ledge, the  former  discovering  what  the  latter  has  not  revealed,  and  the  latter 
revealing  what  the  former  cannot  discover. 

2.  In  the  ascending  scale  of  the  sciences  the  province  of  reason  contracts  as 
that  of  revelation  expands,  with  the  growing  complexity,  obscurity,  and  human 
importance  of  the  sciences  themselves. 

3.  The  joint  action  of  reason  and  revelation  throughout  the  sciences  logically 
involves  the  perfectibility  of  knowledge  or  the  indefinite  expansion  of  .science 
toward  omniscience. 

THE   EXISTING   STATE   OF   THE   SCIENCES. 

1.  Hypotheses  and  dogmas  are  to  be  formed  by  the  scientist  and  religionist 
independently,  each  in  his  own  province,  and  by  his  own  methods. 

2.  Dogmas  within  the  province  of  the  scientist  must  be  tested  in  the  same 
manner  as  his  own  hypotheses;  and  hypotheses  within  the  province  of  the 
religionist,  in  the  same  manner  as  his  own  dogmas. 

3.  Conflicting  hypotheses  and  dogmas  may  be  provisionally  adjusted  by  ex- 
hibiting the  problem  of  opinion,  according  as  reason  or  revelation  predominates 
in  the  normal  scale  of  the  sciences. 

THE   PROSPECTIVE  STATE   OF  THE   SCIENCES. 

1.  In  the  progress  of  the  sciences,  conflicting  hypotheses  and  dogmas,  by  their 
own  attritions  and  mutual  corrections,  pass  into  the  theories  and  doctrines  ac- 
cepted by  both  parties. 

2.  This  gradual  conversion  of  the  hypothetical  and  dogmatical  into  the  scien- 
tific, proceeds  in  the  order  of  the  sciences,  from  one  set  of  facts  to  another,  from 
the  simple  to  the  complex,  from  the  lower  to  the  higher,  from  the  physical 
through  the  psychical  sciences. 

3.  The  historical  goal  of  the  whole  scientific  process,  ever  to  be  approached 
even  if  never  attained,  is  the  absorption  of  positive  in  absolute  science  or  perfect 
knowledge. 

The  ideal  of  a  full  equipment  of  the  sciences  for  their  work  of  endless  pro- 
gression toward  perfect  knowledge. 
Prospect  of  its  realization. 


CHAP,  v.]  Projected  Sciences  and  Arts.  58 1 


PART  III.— SCIENCE  OF  THE  ARTS. 

Practical  issue  of  the  sciences  in  their  correspondent  arts. 
This  growth  of  the  arts  out  of  the  sciences,  from  having  been  spontaneous 
and  irregular,  may  become  more  and  more  logical  and  systematic. 
Logical  partition  of  the  arts  to  be  adjusted  to  that  of  the  sciences. 

1.  Science  of  the  Material  Arts,  or  principles  which  regulate  the  ra- 
tional control  of  man  over  mechanical  and  chemical  phenomena  in  both  the 
terrestrial  and  celestial  spheres  of  action. 

2.  Science  of  the  Moral  Arts,  or  principles  which  regulate  the  rational 
control  of  man  over  individual  and  social  phenomena  in  both  the  terrestrial  and 
celestial  spheres  of  action. 

3..  Science  of  the  Religious  Arts,  or  principles  which  regulate  the  rational 
control  of  man,  in  co-operation  with  God,  over  both  matenal  and  spiritual  phe- 
nomena. 

Procession  of  the  arts  from  and  with  the  sciences  as  involving  the  progressive 
dominion  of  the  creature  over  the  creation,  and  his  participation  in  the  glory  of 
the  Creator. 

Ideal  perfectibility  of  the  arts  as  contrasted  with  their  actual  imperfection. 

The  perfection  of  terrestrial  sciences  and  arts,  both  material  and  spiritual,  as 
involving  a  union  of  the  human  with  the  Divine  mind  and  will  in  the  know- 
ledge and  control  of  all  terrestrial  phenomena. 

The  perfection  of  celestial  sciences  and  arts,  both  spiritual  and  material,  as  in- 
volving the  endless  return,  through  all  worlds  and  ages,  of  the  finite  into  the 
Infinite  Reason  and  efifort  after  the  one  perfect  religion  or  religature  of  the  crea- 
ture to  the  Creator,  through  and  by  means  of  the  creation. 

Aims  of  such  a  course  of  studies :  ist.  To  preserve  throughout  the  scale  of  the 
sciences  the  vital  connection  of  the  rational  with  the  revealed  material  of 
knowledge  and  the  logical  correlations  between  the  human  and  the  divine  fac- 
tors of  knowledge.  2d.  To  combine  in  each  science  all  that  is  established  as 
discovered  with  all  that  is  established  as  revealed,  and  as  to  all  that  is  still  hypo- 
thetical and  dogmatic,  to  show  the  problem  of  opinion.  3d.  To  connect  logically 
the  ascertained  portions  of  one  science  with  those  of  another,  and  problemati- 
cally their  theoretical  portions.  4th.  To  display  with  the  series  of  the  sciences 
their  corresponding  series  of  arts, as  ever  tending  to  enhance  the  Divine  glory 
and  human  welfare.  And  lastly,  to  organize,  by  this  means,  that  proximate 
system  of  sciences,  arts,  and  societies,  upon  which  to  project,  in  endless  per- 
spective, the  ultimate  system. 

The  practical  objection  may  here  be  raised  that  an  academic 
field,  so  wide  and  rich,  would  demand  an  amount  of  research 
and  erudition  in  the  teacher,  and  a  degree  of  maturity  and 
scholarship  in  the  pupil,  which  are  quite  impossible. 

To  the  former  part  of  the  objection  it  is  enough  to  reply  : 
1st.  That  the  aim  need  not  be  to  traverse  the  two  great  divi- 
sions of  knowledge  throughout  their  whole  extent,  but  merely 


582  Philo Sophia  Ultima,  [part  ii, 

that  intersected  portion  of  them  where  they  are  involved  in  a 
kind  of  border  warfare.  2d.  That  into  this  common  field  it 
would  be  needful  to  enter  only  with  a  resume  of  established 
truths  and  principles,  rather  than  with  special  researches  and 
acquisitions.  3d.  That  to  master  the  abstract  part  of  any  of 
the  sciences,  what  may  be  termed  their  philosophy  or  logic, 
does  not  require  learning  so  much  as  thought  and  study. 
4th.  That  those  very  faculties  of  abstraction,  generalization, 
and  comparison  which  would  qualify  for  such  a  task,  would 
almost  disqualify  for  any  other,  and  be  hindered  rather  than 
stimulated  by  minute  investigations.  There  are,  moreover, 
abundant  helps  to  the  work  to  be  found  in  standard  treatises 
authoritative  in  both  schools,  in  compends  of  their  several 
attainments,  and  in  a  current  literature,  teeming  with  the 
richest  and  most  varied  contributions. 

To  the  latter  part  of  the  objection  it  may  be  replied  :  1st. 
That  it  enters  into  the  scope  of  all  academic  life  to  increase 
as  well  as  diffuse  the  existing  stock  of  knowledge.  2d.  That 
in  fulfilling  this  latter  aim,  there  is  always  a  vast  amount  of 
instruction  which  is  simply  stored  rather  than  at  once  digested 
in  the  mind  of  the  student.  3d.  The  efficiency  of  such  teach- 
ing would,  after  all,  depend  upon  the  stage  in  the  curriculum 
at  which  it  should  be  introduced,  and  the  personal  enthusiasm 
with  which  on  both  sides  it  is  conducted. 

We  are  thus  led  next  to  inquire  as  to  the  particular  form 
which  such  academic  training  should  assume,  or  the  best 
method  of  incorporating  it  in  existing  systems  of  education. 

And  here  the  general  principle  is  obvious,  that  it  belongs 
to  the  more  advanced  stages  of  pupilage,  and  should  accom- 
pany or  follow  special  training  in  the  two  departments  it  aims 
to  unite.  It  could  only,  in  order  to  be  effective,  come  after  a 
gymnastic  or  subgraduate  course,  and  would  defeat  its  own  aim 
if  addressed  to  immature  and  unfurnished  minds.  According  to 
the  theory  of  the  true  university,  it  would  be  the  proper  sup- 
plement or  complement  of  the  three  faculties  of  law,  medi- 
cine, and  theology,  and  might  appear  among  them  simply  as 
a  philosophical  professorship,  designed  to  take  the  results  of 
other  professorships,  and,  after  recombining  them,  transmit 
them    through    the   professions    into  the  sphere   of  practice. 


CHAP,  v.]  Projected  Sciaices  and  Arts.  583 

Such  a  device  would  not  only  act  as  a  fixed,  aggregating  centre 
of  those  border  topics  by  which  the  professions  are  logically 
joined  together,  fostering  the  commerce  of  ideas  among  them, 
though  without  hindering  that  division  of  labor  in  which  they 
thrive,  but  it  would  also,  by  its  bearing  upon  all  contemporary 
intellectual  movements,  remain  as  a  watch  tower  and  bulwark 
of  truth  on  the  field  of  error. 

If  the  theory  seem  somewhat  visionary  as  applied  to  our 
American  system,  this  may  only  serve  to  show  at  once  our 
danger  and  remedy.  There  could  not,  in  fact,  be  more 
striking  proof  of  our  need,  motive,  and  opportunity  for  the 
great  reconciliation  than  is  yielded  by  the  history  and  present 
state  of  the  academic  curriculum.  That  schism,  which  in  the 
European  universities  has  issued  in  no  outward  dissociation  of 
the  band  of  scholars,  has  spread  through  our  whole  scheme 
of  education  as  a  visible  breach,  until  at  last  both  philosophy 
and  theology  seem  to  have  lost  their  normal  rank  and  power, 
and  the  very  words  are  turned  by  their  respective  followers 
against  each  other  with  something  of  suspicion.  We  have 
two  classes  of  institutions — the  secular  and  the  sacred,  the 
civil  and  the  ecclesiastical ;  and  in  both  the  work  of  disruption 
has  been  going  forward.  Theology  has  been  driven  from  the 
former  by  the  gradual  ascendency  of  the  classics  and  mathe- 
matics over  the  old  metaphysics  with  which  it  was  once  asso- 
ciated ;  and  philosophy  has  been  driven  from  the  latter  by  the 
degradation  of  the  study  of  divinity  into  a  mere  professional 
and  sectarian  training  of  the  clergy. 

And  hence  the  first  question  to  be  met  in  attempting  their 
educational  fusion  is  as  to  which  party  the  initiative  should 
be  given  ;  whether  the  movement  should  come  from  the  theo- 
logical or  from  the  philosophical  side,  in  the  interest  of  reli- 
gion or  of  science,  as  an  ecclesiastical  or  as  a  catholic  effort. 
The  whole  effect  of  such  academic  study,  will  plainly  be 
modified  according  as  one  or  the  other  of  these  points  of  de- 
parture is  taken. 

In  a  purely  theological  course,  it  would  appear  as  a  branch 
of  apologetics  or  polemics;  and  the  aim  would  be  not  merely 
to  uphold  the  general  authority  of  Scripture,  but  also  of  some 
particular  creed  or  confession  drawn  from  Scripture,  in  its  con- 


584  Philosophia  Ultima.  [part  ii. 

tact  and  conflict  with  the  human  sciences.  And  this,  chiefly 
as  a  kind  of  armor  and  drill  for  the  batde  with  heresy  and 
infidelity.  In  a  purely  philosophical  course,  it  would  appear 
as  a  branch  of  disinterested  research ;  and  the  aim  would  be, 
ignoring  all  creeds  and  sects,  and  viewing  the  revealed  in 
connection  with  the  rational  sciences,  to  define  and  defend  the 
prerogatives  of  each  in  its  own  domain,  and  to  exhibit 
their  joint  product  under  a  scientific  rather  than  a  practical 
aspect,  and  in  its  due  place  and  connections,  in  the  general 
body  of  learning. 

In  favor  of  the  latter  as  compared  with  the  former,  several 
reasons  may  be  urged. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  the  more  natural  and  reasonable 
method.  A  work  of  mediation  involves  mutual  concession ; 
and  if  this  great  movement  must  be  initiated  at  either  extreme, 
it  has  a  clear  right  to  come  from  the  scientific  side,  where  it 
originated,  and  should  be  met  and  welcomed.  It  is  in  fact  a 
concession  which  we  not  only  can  afford  to  make  but  must 
make,  that  revealed  truths  are  as  susceptible  as  natural  truths 
of  rational  support  and  confirmation,  and  may  also  be  safely 
taught  without  regard  to  their  practical  applications,  or  to  the 
transcendent  interests  they  involve,  and  in  entire  freedom 
from  all  prejudice,  as  pure  matters  of  abstract  rather  than  of 
applied  science.  If  the  great  fundamental  tenet  of  inspiration 
cannot  base  itself  in  scientific  discovery,  but  is  doomed  to  be 
steadily  undermined,  then  the  whole  superstructure  of  the 
biblical  sciences  must  crumble  with  it  into  ruins  as  mere 
superstition  and  bigotry.  While  we  are  unwilling  that  savants 
should  force  their  theories  upon  us  as  creeds,  we  must  permit 
them  to  treat  out  creeds  as  theories  until  found  consistent 
with  science.  We  need  not  fear,  that  practically  and  personally 
the  one  party  will  be  any  the  less  moral,  religious,  and  ortho- 
dox, or  the  other  any  the  less  learned,  humane,  and  philo- 
sophical, on  account  of  such  a  problematical  state  of  their 
relations. 

So  long,  indeed,  as  theology,  in  a  course  of  education,  is 
forced  into  any  warlike  bearing,  offensive  or  defensive,  apolo- 
getic or  polemic,  even  her  own  interests  may  be  damaged ; 
but  when  she  is  allowed  her  due  place  among  the  sciences, 


CHAP,  v.]  Projected  Sciences  and  Arts.  585 

as  alike  entering  with  them  all  into  the  training  of  an  accom- 
plished scholar,  and  it  is  made  the  recognized  vocation  of  both 
teacher  and  pupil  to  address  themselves  to  her  lessons  with 
philosophic  candor  and  conscientious  enthusiasm,  truth  will 
at  least  be  in  the  way  of  gaining  the  homage  of  reason,  and 
from  the  first  have  the  vantage  over  error. 

In  the  second  place,  it  would  reach  a  larger  and  more  varied 
mass  of  the  forming  mind  of  society.  Instead  of  being  con- 
fined to  one  calling,  it  would  include  candidates  for  all  the 
three  learned  professions,  who,  viewed  respectively  as  votaries 
of  physical,  metaphysical,  and  theological  science,  are  the  real 
parties  first  interested  in  the  reconciliation,  and  by  their  pres- 
ence together  in  the  same  relations  might  yield  a  wholesome 
stimulus  and  check  upon  both  professor  and  student. 

In  the  third  place,  it  would  be  preventive,  rather  than  simply 
remedial,  as  to  existing  social  perils.  However  desirable  it 
may  be  to  equip  the  Church  with  new  apologetic  appliances 
in  view  of  modern  scientific  skepticism,  yet  these  after  all 
would  not  reach  the  evil  at  its  hidden  springs.  It  has  its 
origin  in  the  very  methods,  habits,  and  acquirements  of 
science,  and  by  means  of  these  alone  can  be  mastered  and 
corrected. 

In  the  fourth  place,  it  would  have  the  high  character  and 
even  the  impressive  appearance  of  an  effort  to  follow  the 
revolted  sciences  into  their  own  haunts  of  estrangement  and 
error  and  win  them  back  again  by  their  own  logic  and  laws. 
It  would  be  leading  forth  the  young  and  eager  thought  of  the 
time  on  a  new  mission  of  truth  and  love,  rather  than  in  the 
old  and  crooked  w^ays  of. prejudice  and  passion.  What  are 
most  of  the  existing  treatises  or  even  professorships  put  forth 
in  the  interest  of  theology,  as  viewed  by  her  foes,  but  weak 
confessions  that  she  is  on  the  defensive,  and  base  signals  of 
defeat  ?  It  is  not  by  polemics,  apologies,  or  evidences,  that  she 
will  ever  resume  her  rightful  dominion  in  the  seats  of  learn- 
ing. It  is  not  by  any  sacred  sophistry  that  she  is  to  convince 
the  disciples  of  reason,  or  with  mere  dogmatic  assertion  that 
she  can  reclaim  the  homage  of  philosophy.  Science,  like 
nature,  can  only  be  controlled  through  a  knowledge  of  her 
laws.  These  once  found  and  imposed,  she  will  prove  no  way- 
3-Y 


586  Philosophia  Ultima.  [part  ii. 

ward  seeker  of  truth,  but  as  her  Eastern  sages  once  read  a 
gospel  in  the  stars,  will  come  by  he:  own  researches  to  the 
manifested  God,  and  worship  Him  with  fair  and  costly  art. 

But  ■  from  whichever  side,  or  at  whatever  point  of  the 
academic  system,  the  work  of  affiliation  shall  proceed,  as  it 
advances  it  cannot  but  be  met  with  a  wide  and  hearty  welcome. 
He  has  but  illy  scanned  the  present  state  of  learning  who 
takes  the  wordy  strife  of  mere  bigots  and  savants  as  a  fair 
reflection  of  the  general  mind  upon  the  question.  There  runs 
through  the  catholic  thought  of  the  age,  however  seldom 
expressed,  a  deep  undertone  of  sadness  and  misgiving  rather 
than  of  mutual  anger  and  defiance.  True  philosophy  takes 
no  delight  in  this  sore  feud,  which  has  rent  the  body  of  her 
disciples  in  twain,  but  in  their  midst  still  secretly  yearns  for  a 
just  reconciliation.  And  when  once  any  movement  shall  have 
gone  forth  among  them  which  shall  seem  to  command  them 
with  a  voice  of  reason  and  love,  it  must  sooner  or  later  be 
hailed  with  joy,  however  obscure  and  feeble  may  have  been  its 
beginnings. 

Thus  has  Providence  prepared  the  soil,  as  well  as  disclosed 
the  field,  and  sifted  the  seed  for  a  mighty  harvest  of  truth,  in 
which  we  may  be  the  sowers  and  the  latest  posterity  the 
reapers.  A  great  work  may  at  least  be  commenced  by  us  : 
the  time  is  at  hand  ;  the  scene  is  ready ;  and  the  mode  is 
obvious.  In  these  last  days  and  at  these  ends  of  the  earth,  we 
have  the  means  of  not  merely  projecting  but  also  of  inaugura- 
ting that  scheme  of  perfect  knowledge  through  which  the  dis- 
severed hosts  of  philosophy  are  to  be  thoroughly  organized, 
and  at  length  science  matured,  art  perfected,  society  renewed, 
and  the  whole  world  filled  with  a  glory  of  which  it  is  not 
possible  now  to  conceive. 


Here  let  us  rest  in  this  difficult  ascent  of  thought  which  we 
have  climbed.  Though  the  way  may  have  seemed  uncertain 
and  tedious,  yet  the  prospect  gained  is  sure.  That  which  can 
now  only  be  called  the  ultimate  philosophy  may  rise  under 
another  name  and  in  other  ways;  but  whenever,  wherever, 
and  however  inaugurated  it  is  itself  inevitable.     Every  species 


CHAP,  v.]  Projected  Sciences  and  Arts.  5  87 

of  pledge,  the  word  of  God,  the  law  of  facts,  and  the  voice  of 
reason  combine  to  proclaim  it.  It  is  that  perfect  system  of 
knowledge  and  of  society  which  both  logically  and  provi- 
dentially results  from  the  whole  previous  development  of 
humanity.  It  is  the  goal  of  history,  seen  with  the  eyes  of 
prophecy  and  philosophy,  and  yearned  after  by  the  heart  of 
philanthropy.  It  is  the  millennium  projected  upon  rational 
sequence  as  well  as  divine  decree ;  and  could  it  fail  to  come  to 
pass,  it  would  not  simply  be  as  if  a  great  human  hope  had 
perished,  but  as  if  the  divine  reason  had  falsified  its  own 
premises,  laid  through  all  the  past,  and  left  the  problem  of  the 
world  unsolved.  Astronomers  tell  us  that  were  this  material 
globe  to  reel  from  its  orbit,  it  could  only  be  by  a  miracle,  sus- 
pending the  very  laws  of  mathematics  ;  but  how  much  less 
conceivable  that  the  moral  world  should  ever  recoil  in  mid- 
progress  and  the  whole  work  of  time  become  a  meaningless 
fragment !  The  flower  of  the  planetary  life,  rooted  in  extinct 
marvels,  and  blooming  through  long  ages  of  sin  and  sorrow, 
will  not  thus  be  blighted  at  its  budding.  The  fairest  ideal 
that  lives  in  divine  and  human  fancy  will  not  thus  be  turned 
to  naught. 

Behold,  then,  at  one  glance,  the  issue  to  which  we  are  come. 
The  summary  want  of  the  age,  is  that  last  philosophy  into  which 
shall  have  been  sifted  all  other  philosophy,  which  shall  be  at 
once  catholic  and  eclectic,  which  shall  be  the  joint  growth  and 
fruit  of  reason  and  faith,  and  which  shall  shed  forth,  through 
every  walk  of  research,  the  blended  light  of  discovery  and 
revelation;  a  philosophy  which  shall  be  no  crude  aggregate 
of  decaying  systems  and "  doctrines,  but  their  distilled  issue 
and  living  effect,  and  which  shall  not  have  sprung,  full  born 
from  any  one  mind  or  people,  but  mature  as  the  common 
work  and  reward  of  all ;  a  philosophy  which,  proceeding 
upon  the  unity  of  truth,  shall  establish  the  harmony  of 
knowledge  through  the  intelligent  concurrence  of  the  human 
with  the  divine  intellect,  and  the  rational  subjection  of  the 
finite  to  the  Infinite  reason;  a  philosophy,  too,  which  shall 
be  as  beneficent  as  it  is  sacred,  which  in  the  act  of  healing  the 
schisms  of  truth,  shall  also  heal  the  sects  of  the  school,  of 
the  church,  and  of  the  state,  and  while  rccfcncratincr  human 


588  Philosophia  Ultima.  [part  ii. 

art,  both  material  and  moral,  shall  at  length  regenerate 
human  society;  a  philosophy,  in  a  word,  which  shall  be  the 
means  of  subjecting  the  earth  to  man  and  man  to  God,  by 
grouping  the  sciences,  with  their  fruits  and  trophies,  at  the 
feet  of  Omniscience,  and  there  converging  and  displaying 
all  laws  and  causes  in  God,  the  cause  of  causes  and  of  laws, 
of  whom  are  all  things  and  in  whom  all  things  consist ;  to 
whom  alone  be  glory. 


INDEX   OF   SUBJECTS 

IN  THE   ORDER   OF   THEIR   TREATMENT. 


INTRODUCTION 


THE  ACADEMIC   STUDY   OF  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE. 

The  province  and  limits  of  Christian  science,  4-6 :  its  topics,  7-9.  Religion  and 
Science  related  logically,  historically  and  practically,  9-13  :  their  relations  extensive, 
complicated  and  vital,  13-15  :  their  reconciliation  feasible  and  inevitable,  15-17. 
Importance  of  their  harmony  to  science,  to  religion  and  to  philosophy,  17-19.  The 
study  of  Christian  science,  20 :  its  intellectual  and  moral  value,  21-23. 


PART  I.— THE   PHILOSOPHICAL   PARTIES  AS  TO  THE   RE- 
LATIONS BETWEEN  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

CHAPTER  I. 

EARLY   CONFLICTS   AND   ALLIANCES   BETWEEN   SCIENCE   AND   KELIGION. 

The  causes  of  their  present  disturbed  relations  historically  traced  from  the  dawn 
of  Greek  philosophy  to  the  Reformation,  27-51. 

THE   PRE-CHRISTIAN   AGE   OF   PAGAN  SCIENCE. 

Conflicts  of  philosophy  and  mythology.  Proto-martyrs  of  science  and  Proto-types 
of  infidelity,  29,  30. 

THE   POST-CHRISTIAN  AGE  OF   PAGAN  SCIENCE. 

Conflicts  of  Christianity  and  philosophy.  Christian  converts  and  church  fathers 
who  assailed  philosophy.  Pagan  writers  and  philosophers  who  assailed  Christianity, 
31.  32. 

THE   PATRISTIC    AGE  OF  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE. 

Alliance  of  theology  and  philosophy.  Greek  and  Latin  fathers  who  espoused 
Platonism  and  Aristotelianism,  and  corrupted  the  sciences  of  astronomy,  geology 
and  geography,  33,  34.     Blended  Pagan  and  Christian  culture,  35,  36. 

THE  SCHOLASTIC    AGE  OF  CHRISTIAN   SCIENCE. 

Predominance  of  theology :  leading  scholastic  theologians :  scholastic  Christian 
culture,  36-38.  Subjugation  of  philosophy :  scholastic  logicians,  metaphysicians 
and  physicists  who  suffered  persecution  :  corrupted  state  of  the  sciences,  38-40. 

589 


590  Index  of  Siibjects, 


THE   REFORMING  AGE  OF   CHRISTIAN   SCIENCE. 

The  assault  of  theology :  reforming  scholastics  and  philosophers  who  were  as- 
sailed :  conflicts  in  geography  and  astronomy  :  final  retreat  of  theology,  41-44.  The 
revolt  of  philosophy  :  sceptical  scholastics,  philosophers,  scientists,  deists  :  final  at- 
tack of  philosophy,  45-48.  The  present  decisive  conflict  between  religion  and 
science  :  its  field,  weapons  and  issues,  49-51. 

CHAPTER   II. 

MODERN  ANTAGONISM   BETWEEN   SCIENCE  AND   RELIGION. 

The  four  philosophical  parties  as  to  the  question.  Definition  of  the  Extremists, 
both  scientific  and  religious,  as  infidels  and  apologists ;  and  their  conflicts  traced  in 
the  different  sciences  from  one  country  to  another  during  the  last  three  centuries, 
52-93- 

THE   CONFLICT   IN   ASTRONOMY. 

Italian,  English,  French  and  German  infidels  who  have  assailed  revealed  doctrines 
of  creation,  incarnation  and  atonement  with  astronomical  weapons,  and  leading 
apologists  in  the  same  countries  who  have  defended  the  false  Ptolemaic  astronomy 
with  supposed  biblical  weapons,  56-61. 

THE   CONFLICT    IN    GEOLOGY. 

Infidel  geologists  in  Italy,  England,  France  and  Germany  who  have  assailed  the 
Mosaic  cosmogony,  and  Christian  apologists  in  the  same  countries  who  have  de- 
fended a  false  biblical  geology,  61-65. 

THE   CONFLICT   IN   ANTHROPOLOGY. 

Recent  infidel  assaults  in  Europe  and  America  upon  the  creation,  unity  and 
divine  image  of  mankind,  and  weak  apologetic  defences  of  existing  dogmas  in  refer- 
ence to  the  same  questions,  66-63. 

THE   CONFLICT   IN   PSYCHOLOGY. 
Italian,  English,  French  and  German  infidels  who  have  assailed  the  spirituality, 
responsibility  and  immortality  of  the  soul  with  Aristotelianism,  empiricism,  sensual- 
ism and  materialism,  69-71.     Apologists  in  the  same  countries,  who  have  defended 
such  tenets  with  Platonism,  idealism,  dualism,  monadism  and  spiritualism,  69-75. 

THE   CONFLICT   IN  SOCIOLOGY. 

Italian  statesmen,  English  historians,  French  socialists,  German  philosophers  of 
history,  who  have  assailed  the  doctrine  of  Providence,  the  Church  and  the  millen- 
nium. Italian  churchmen,  French  theocrats,  English  episcopalians  and  presbyte- 
rians,  and  German  ecclesiastical  historians  who  have  defended  the  same  doctrines, 

7S-8I. 

THE  CONFLICT   IN   THEOLOGY. 

Italian  naturalists,  English  deists,  French  atheists,  German  pantheists  and  Ameri- 
can religionists  who  have  assailed  the  being,  character  and  government  of  God,  and 
the  distinctive  doctrines  of  Christianity.  Italian,  English,  French  and  German 
theists  and  divines  who  have  defended  natural  and  revealed  religion,  81-86. 

THE  CONFLICT   IN    PHILOSOPHY. 

Antagonistic  efforts  of  rationalists  and  mystics  to  supplant  reason  or  revelation  in 
Italy,  England,  France,  Germany  during  the  last  three  centuries,  87-90. 


Index  of  Subjects.  591 


THE  RESULTS   IN  CIVILIZATION. 

Disastrous  social  and  political  convulsions  attending  modern  impiety  and  fanati- 
cism in  different  European  countries,  91-92, 

Refutation  of  the  opinion  that  there  is  any  real  antagonism  between  true  science 
and  true  religion.  The  antagonism  apparent  rather  than  real,  temporary  rather 
than  permanent,  and  in  some  respects  more  salutary  than  hurtful,  92,  93. 

CHAPTER  III. 

MODERN   INDIFFERENTIS.M   BETWEEN   SCIENCE  AND   RELIGION. 

Definition  of  the  party  of  indifferentists,  both  scientific  and  religious,  as  sciolists 
and  dogmatists ;  and  the  schism  between  the  scientific  and  biblical  portions  of  each 
science  historically  traced,  through  three  successive  stages,  from  their  false  com- 
bination in  the  middle  ages  to  their  open  rupture  at  the  present  day.  The  schism 
traced  in  the  physical  sciences,  in  the  psychical  sciences,  in  the  metaphysical  sciences, 
and  in  philosophy,  to  its  practical  effects  in  civilization,  95-315. 
THE  SCHISM   IN  ASTRONOMY. 

Scientijic  Astronomy.— Y'xxst  stage  of  healthful  separation  from  a  false  biblical 
astronomy  :  progress  of  the  science  :  leading  authorities  :  establishment  of  solar  and 
sidereal  astronomy,  99-101. 

Second  separative  stage  of  indifference.  Hypothetical  astronomy.  Opposite 
hypotheses  as  to  the  origin,  development  and  destiny  of  worlds.  Hypothesis  of  a 
spontaneous  growth  of  the  suns  and  planets  from  nebulte :  its  history  and  chief  ad- 
vocates :  extension  of  it  to  the  stars  and  galaxies.  Hypothesis  of  a  series  of  worlds : 
its  history  and  principal  advocates,  101-104.  Hypothesis  of  a  plurality  of  inhabited 
worlds :  its  history,  principal  advocates  and  opponents,  104-108.  Rival  hypotheses 
of  a  final  chaos  or  permanent  cosmos,  with  their  respective  adherents,  108-110. 

Third  separative  stage  of  open  rupture.  Renunciation  of  the  biblical  astronomy 
as  of  no  scientific  value  by  certain  speculative  astronomers  and  physicists,  iio-iii. 

Biblical  Astronomy.— Y'lxst  stage  of  healthful  separation  from  a  false  scientific 
astronomy.  Leading  divines  and  reformers  who  freed  the  Scriptures  from  the  super- 
stitions of  the  mediaeval  astrology  and  divination.  Establishment  of  a  true  biblical 
astronomy,  111-112. 

Second  separative  stage  of  indifference.  Remaining  traditional  dogmas  as  to  the 
creation,  angels,  and  the  predicted  new  heavens.  Opinions  of  the  principal  fathers, 
schoolmen,  reformers  and  later  divines,  112-117. 

Thirdstage  of  open  rupture.    Repudiation  of  the  whole  scientific  astronomy  as  of  no 
Scriptural  warrant  or  dogmatic  interest  by  certain  divines  and  commentators,  117-118. 
THE  SCHISM   IN   GEOLOGY. 

Scientific  Geology. — Discovery  of  the  true  figure,  surface  and  strata  of  the  globe  : 
chief  founders  and  authorities  of  the  science,  118-120.  Opposite  views  of  leading 
Neptunists  and  Vulcanists  as  to  the  formation  of  the  earth ;  of  the  principal  Catas- 
trophists  and  Uniformitarians  as  to  the  development  of  the  globe  ;  and  also  as  to  the 
durability  or  approaching  destruction  of  our  planet,  121-131.  Sciolists  who  have 
ignored  or  repudiated  the  biblical  geology  as  of  no  scientific  value,  131-133. 

Biblical  Geology. — Deliverance  from  false  scientific  geologies  and  cosmogonies. 
Prominent  schoolmen,  reformers  and  divines  who  have  thus  aided  in  establishing  the 
true  biblical  geology,  133,  134.  Oriental,  Greek,  Patristic,  Scholastic  and  Protest- 
ant opinions  as  to  the  primitive  chaos:  Dogmas  of  the  same  authorities  in  respect  to 
the  creative  days  or  periods:  and  also  in  respect  to  the  predicted  new  earth,  135- 
139.  Dogmatists  who  have  rejected  or  slighted  the  scientific  geology  as  of  no  Scrip- 
tural significance,  139-141, 


592  Index  of  Subjects. 


THE  SCHISM  IN  ANTHROPOLOGY. 
Scientific  Anthropology. — Discovery  of  the  true  physical  structure  and  rank  of 
man.  Origin  and  progress  of  physiology,  ethnology,  philology  and  archasology, 
with  chief  authorities  in  the  anthropological  sciences,  141-143.  History  of  contro- 
versies in  regard  to  the  evolution  or  the  constancy  of  human  races,  languages  and 
arts,  and  contrasted  views  of  leading  physiologists,  linguists  and  antiquarians. 
Similar  history  of  controversies  and  collation  of  opinions  as  to  a  unity  or  a  plurality 
■  of  races,  languages  and  arts ;  and  also  as  to  a  gradual  improvement  or  extinction  of 
the  same,  143-166.  Sciolists,  who  ignore  or  reject  the  biblical  anthropology  as  of 
no  scientific  import,  166-168. 

Biblical  Anthropology. — Deliverance  from  the  traditional  scientific  anthropology — 
Modern  reformers,  divines,  missionaries  who  have  made  contributions  to  ethnology, 
philology  and  archceology,  and  thus  founded  a  true  biblical  anthropology,  168-170. 
Pagan,  Hebrew,  and  Christian  traditions,  ancient,  mediaeval,  and  modem  Church 
dogmas,  concerning  the  original  divine  image  in  Adam  :  similar  traditions  and  dog- 
mas, as  to  the  fall  of  mankind  in  Adam :  and  also,  as  to  the  new  race  in  Christ,  the 
Second  Adam  of  the  new  covenant,  170-175.  Modern  divines  who  are  assailing  the 
new  scientific  anthropology  as  inconsistent  with  the  Scriptures,  176,  177. 

THE   SCHISM   IN   PSYCHOLOGY. 

Scientific  Psychology. — Emancipation  of  medical  psychology  from  mediasval  super- 
stition :  rise  of  logic,  ethics  and  aesthetics :  leading  thinkers  who  have  classified  the 
mental  faculties  and  laws,  and  defined  and  founded  the  scientific  psychology,  178- 
180.  Opposite  schools  of  spiritualists  and  materialists,  who  have  resolved  matter 
into  mind,  or  mind  into  matter :  of  necessitarians  and  libertarians,  who  have  main- 
tained the  slavery  or  the  freedom  of  the  will:  of  mortalists  and  immortalists,  who 
have  advocated  the  destruction  or  the  survival  of  the  soul,  180-196.  Modern  think- 
ers who  ignore  or  reject  the  whole  biblical  psychology,  197,  198. 

Biblical  Psychology. — Disappearance  of  the  scholastic  psychology  under  the  theo- 
logical criticism  of  the  reformers :  prominent  divines  who  have  made  contributions 
to  ethical  and  logical  science,  and  treated  psychologically  of  the  doctrines  of  grace, 
198,  199.  Creationism  and  Traducianism  as  held  by  leading  Catholic  and  Protest- 
ant divines,  who  have  taught  that  the  soul  is  immediately  created  by  God  or  derived 
from  the  parents :  similar  authorities  who  have  maintained  a  baptismal  or  a  moral 
regeneration  of  the  soul:  various  traditional  dogmas  as  to  the  resurrection,  purga- 
tory and  paradise,  199-203.  Modern  divines  who  forego  or  depreciate  the  scientific 
psychology  as  of  no  scriptural  importance,  204. 

THE  SCHISM  IN  SOCIOLOGY. 
Scientific  .S'o^'o/ci^^oj.— Emancipation  of  the  State  from  a  false  theocracy,  and  rise 
of  the  political  and  social  sciences:  leading  statesmen,  historians,  publicists,  econo- 
mists, philanthropists  who  laid  the  foundations  of  a  scientific  sociology,  205-206. 
Opposite  views  of  prominent  legitimists  and  revolutionists  who  have  traced  civil  go- 
vernment to  a  divine  right  or  a  social  contract :  philosophic  historians  who  have 
pragmatically  referred  all  civilization  to  Divine  Providence,  to  kings  and  statesmen, 
to  great  men,  to  great  ideas:  or  who  have  inductively  sought  laws  of  physical,  in- 
tellectual, moral,  and  providential  development  in  art,  science,  politics  and  re- 
ligion :  rival  schools  of  re-actionists  and  progressionists  who  have  advocated  the 
corruptibility  of  human  society  or  maintained  its  indefinite  physical,  intellectual  and 
moral  improvement,  207-228.     Sciolists  who  would  exclude  the  biblical  doctrines  of 


Index  of  Subjects,  593 

Providence,  the  Church  and  the  Millennium  as  of  no  value  in  the  social  sciences, 
228-229. 

BitUcal  Sociology. — Emancipation  of  the  Church  from  the  tyrannical  forms  of  the 
State,  and  growth  of  purer  views  of  its  spiritual  nature  and  mission :  ecclesiastical 
martyrs  and  reformers  who  have  re-organized  Christian  society  and  re-defined  the 
Scripture  doctrine  of  the  Church,  229,  230.  Still  remaining  Catholic,  Episcopalian, 
Presbyterian  and  Congregational  dogmas  of  Church  polity  ;  Catholic,  Protestant, 
Sectarian  and  Schismatic  schools  of  Church  history :  various  views  of  the  Church 
triumphant  or  Church  of  the  future,  230-232.  Dogmatists  who  forego  all  social  sci- 
ence in  thtir  treatment  of  ecclesiastical  questions,  232,  233. 

THE  SCHISM   IN   THEOLOGY. 

Scientific  Theology. — Decline  of  scholastic  divinity  and  rise  of  natural  Theology: 
Deists  and  speculative  Theists  who  have  framed  the  moral,  teleological,  cosmologi- 
cal,  ontological  proofs  of  a  God,  and  missionaries,  antiquarians  and  mythologists 
who  have  been  seeking  to  found  a  new  scientific  theology  or  science  of  religions, 
234,  235.  Supematuralistic  Theists  who  have  maintained  that  religion  is  wholly  re- 
vealed and  traced  natural  religion  to  the  Christian  revelation,  and  both  to  a  primi- 
tive revelation  :  Rationalistic  Deists  who  have  maintained  that  religion  is  purely  ra- 
tional, reduced  Christianity  to  mere  natural  religion,  and  merged  both  in  other  reli- 
gions of  the  heathen  world  :  Theists  who  have  referred  the  history  of  religion  to  suc- 
cessive divine  economies  involving  the  destruction  of  heathenism,  Judaism,  and  cor- 
rupt forms  of  Christianity :  Deists  who  have  referred  the  history  of  religion  to  laws 
of  political,  intellectual  and  religious  development,  susceptible  of  scientific  study  and 
treatment :  Christian  theists  who  have  been  anticipating  the  triumph  of  Christianity 
over  Heathenism,  Mohammedanism  and  Antichristian  heresy,  as  the  one  absolute 
religion  of  the  future  :  comparative  religionists  who  anticipate  the  one  absolute  reli- 
gion from  a  coalescence  of  Christianity  with  other  religions,  236-259.  New  school 
of  speculative  religionists  who  would  exclude  all  revealed  theology  as  unscientific,  • 
258-260. 

Biblical  Theology. — Emancipation  from  patristic  and  scholastic  dogmatism — Pro- 
testant, Reformed  and  Puritan  divines  who  have  aided  in  restoring  the  true  revealed 
doctrine  of  God  and  divine  things,  260,  261.  Catholic,  Protestant,  Reformed,  Puri- 
tan and  Sectarian  dogmatists  who  still  adhere  in  various  degrees  to  the  traditional 
theology,  261-263.  Dogmatic  divines  who  wholly  ignore  or  neglect  the  new  scien- 
tific theology  as  of  no  Scriptural  warrant  or  doctrinal  interest,  263,  264. 

THE  SCHISM   IN   METAPHYSICS. 

Scientific  Cosmology. — Decline  of  scholastic  subtleties  before  modern  metaphysi- 
cal thought :  leading  founders  of  rational  psychology,  cosmology  and  theology,  and 
present  votaries  of  metaphysical  science,  264-265.  Opposite  schools  of  dualists  and 
monists,  who  have  advocated  a  dual  spiritualistic,  or  a  single  materialistic  origin  of 
the  universe :  of  creationists  and  evolutionists,  who  have  held  to  successive  mira- 
culous creations  throughout  the  material  and  spiritual  world,  or  to  one  spontaneous 
development  by  connected  laws  :  of  optimists  and  pessimists,  who  have  maintained 
that  the  existing  universe  is  the  best  possible  or  the  worst  possible,  266-277.  Mo- 
dem scientists  who  ignore  the  Scriptures  as  authority  on  metaphysical  questions, 
277,  278. 

Biblical  Cosmology. — Deliverance  from  the  metaphysical  divinity  of  the  middle 
ages.  Reformers  and  speculative  divines  who  have  laid  the  foundations  of  a  new 
metaphysical  Theology  at  once  rational  and  revealed,  279.  Catholic  and  Protestant 
3-z 


594  Index  of  Subjects. 

divines  who  have  still  adhered  to  the  traditional  dogmas  as  to  the  Trinity,  the  Crea- 
tion and  Providence,  279,  280.  Modern  theologians  who  neglect  or  reject  the  re- 
sults of  recent  metaphysical  thought,  280,  281. 

THE  RUPTURE   IN   PHILOSOPHY. 

Scientific  Knowledge. — Legitimate  rise  of  free  thought  in  the  Reformation :  lead- 
ing philosophers  who  have  announced  and  constructed  new  theories  and  systems 
of  universal  knowledge,  and  thus  contributed  materials  for  a  final  philosophy  or  sci- 
ence of  tlie  sciences,  281-283.  Idealists,  who  have  restricted  all  knowledge  to  divine 
ideas,  or  to  mere  phsenomena,  or  to  self-consciousness :  realists,  who  have  embraced 
in  our  knowledge  material  objects,  external  qualities  and  noumenal  essences  :  Tran- 
scendentalists  who  have  proceeded  deductively  from  the  divine  attributes,  from  self- 
consciousness,  from  the  absolute  idea:  Empiricists  who  have  proceeded  inductively 
from  mere  phsenomena,  to  their  causes,  to  their  laws :  Absolutists  who  have  held  the 
Infinite  to  be  conceivable,  cognizable  and  comprehensible :  Positivists  who  have  held 
it  to  be  incomprehensible,  incognizable  and  inconceivable,  284-303.  Modern  phi- 
losophers and  scientists  who  ignore  or  reject  revelation  as  a  source  of  knowledge, 
303-305- 

Biblical  Knowledge. — Reaction  against  the  false  Protestantism  of  unbelief  and  ra- 
tionalism :  leading  apologists  who  have  collected  the  metaphysical  and  empirical 
evidences  of  the  Christian  revelation,  and  aided  in  founding  the  true  doctrine  of  re- 
vealed divine  wisdom,  305.  Remaining  Catholic  and  Protestant  dogmas  as  to  ideal 
or  verbal  inspiration  :  as  to  apocryphal  or  canonical  Scriptures  :  and  as  to  the  extent 
and  manner  of  their  fulfillment,  306-307.  Modern  divines  who  are  ignorant  or  in- 
different as  to  all  scientific  or  philosophical  knowledge,  307. 

THE   BREACH   IN   CIVILIZATION. 

Schistnafic  Secular  Culture. — Alienation  of  civilization  from  Christianity  since  the 
Reformation,  growth  of  a  purely  worldly  culture,  and  gradual  secularization  of  li- 
terature, of  art,  of  science,  of  politics,  and  of  religion,  308-311. 

Schismatic  Religious  Culture. — Alienation  of  Christianity  from  civilization,  growth 
of  a  purely  religious  culture,  and  gradual  abnegation  of  literature,  of  art,  of  science, 
of  politics,  and  of  the  earthly  side  of  religion,  311-315.  Refutation  of  the  opinion 
that  there  is  any  real  indifferentism  between  true  science  and  true  religion  :  such  in- 
differentism  involves  a  dismemberment  of  knowledge,  extends  through  all  the  sci- 
ences, and  is  fraught  with  the  greatest  evils  in  the  realm  of  philosophy,  in  the  edu- 
cational system,  and  in  all  the  practical  spheres  of  civilization,  315-320. 

CHAPTER   IV. 

MODERN  ECLECTICISM  BETWEEN  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

Definition  of  the  party  of  impatients,  both  scientific  and  religious,  as  eclectics  who 

seek  to  blend  hypotheses  and  dogmas  prematurely  and  illogically :  with  examples 

of  such  eclecticism  in  the  various  sciences,  in  philosophy  and  in  civilization,  330- 

398. 

ECLECTICISM  IN  ASTRONOMY. 

The  Ptolemaic  and  Copernican  systems  of  the  Biblical  heavens :  the  theistic  ar- 
gument of  celestial  physics  as  treated  by  various  astronomers  and  divines,  323-325. 
Advocates  of  the  nebular  hjjpothesis  who  have  blended  it  with  the  Scripture  history 
of  creation  :  advocates  of  the  plurality  of  inhabited  worlds  who  have  blended  it  with 
the  Scripture  doctrine  of  angels,  redemption  and  incarnation,  326-331.  Attempted 
scientific  explanations  of  the  astronomical  miracles  of  the  Arrest  of  the  Sun,  the 


Index  of  Subjects.  595 

Dial  of  Ahaz,  the  Star  in  the  East,  and  the  predicted  Renewal  of  the  Heavens,  332- 
337- 

ECLECTICISM   IN   GEOLOGY. 

The  traditional  geography  and  terrestrial  physics  as  incorporated  with  the  Scrip- 
tures :  physicists,  chemists,  geologists,  naturalists  and  divines  who  have  contributed 
to  the  theistic  argument,  337-340.  Cosmogonists  who  have  combined  the  hypothe- 
sis of  a  chaos  with  the  doctrine  of  Satanic  agency  :  Harmonists  who  have  sought — 
(i)  to  compress  the  geological  periods  in  creative  days  of  twenty-four  hours,  (2)  to 
insert  tbem  between  a  primitive  creation  and  six  literal  days  of  a  new  creation,  (3) 
to  expand  the  six  days  into  long  creative  eras  corresponding  to  the  geological  pe- 
riods, (4)  to  treat  both  the  Mosaic  days  and  the  geological  periods  as  ideal  moments 
or  phases  of  the  creative  activity,  340-347.  Sacred  Theories  of  the  Earth  :  Scientific 
explanations  of  the  geological  miracles,  the  Deluge,  the  Final  Conflagration,  and 
predicted  Renovation  of  the  Earth,  347-350. 

ECLECTICISM   IN   ANTHROPOLOGY. 

The  traditional  ethnography  and  archDeology  as  derived  from  the  Scriptures 
Botanists,  Zoologists,  Physiologists,  who  have  contributed  to  the  theistic  argument 
351,352.  Creationists  who  have  identified  their  successive  genera  and  species  as 
abrupt  creations  :  Evolutionists  who  are  beginning  to  admit  the  development  hypo- 
thesis into  the  inorganic,  thfe  vegetal,  the  animal,  and  the  human  kingdoms,  353- 
355.  Ethnologists  who  refer  all  human  races  to  one  progenitor,  Adam,  or  take 
Adam  as  the  ancestor  of  the  Caucasian  race  and  the  moral,  federal  representative 
of  other  indigenous  races,  356,  357.  Archaeologists  who  include  all  monuments 
and  traditions  within  six  thousand  years,  or  expand  the  received  biblical  theoloo-y 
indefinitely,  so  as  to  include  long  extinct  human  and  angelic  civilizations,  358-360. 
Philologists  who  are  in  like  manner  divided  as  to  the  Scripture  doctrine  of  lan- 
guages, 360,  361.  Attempted  scientific  verifications  of  such  mifacles  as  the  Ark  of 
Noah,  the  Tower  of  Babel,  the  divine  humanity  of  the  Seconfi  Adam,  and  the  pre- 
dicted innocence  of  the  animal  and  human  creation  in  a  restored  paradise,  361,  362. 

ECLECTICISM  IN  PSYCHOLOGY, 
The  mental  sciences  as  traditionally  based  in  the  Scriptures.  Esthetic,  ethical 
and  psychological  thinkers  who  have  contributed  to  the  theistic  argument,  363-365. 
Advocates  of  pre-existence  of  souls,  creationists  and  traduchnists  who  have  sought 
a  biblical  basis  for  their  opinions,  365-367.  Opposite  schools  of  libertarians  and 
necessitarians  in  regard  to  the  doctrines  of  predestination,  regeneration  and  respon- 
sibility, 367-369.  Opposite  ethical  schools  of  utilitarians  and  ascetics  in  regard  to 
the  doctrine  of  Christian  virtue,  369,  370.  ImmortaUsts  who  have  held  that  the 
soul  becomes  immediately  holy  in  the  intermediate  state,  or  that  it  is  susceptible  of 
increasing  happiness  and  holiness,  or  that  it  is  at  once  absorbed  and  lost  in  the 
divine  consciousness  :  mortalists  who  have  held  that  the  soul  sleeps  unconsciously 
in  the  intermediate  state,  or  that  it  is  wholly  extinguished  with  the  body  till  the  re- 
surrection, 370-375.  Speculative  psychologists  and  divines  who  have  held  that  the 
spiritual  body  is  immediately  developed  out  of  the  present  organism,  or  that  it  will 
hereafter  be  resuscitated  with  the  very  same  material  substance  as  now,  or  re- 
organized from  different  substance  with  the  same  structure,  or  simply  express  the 
same  character  through  different  matter  and  even  a  different  form,  375-379.  Scien- 
tific verification  of  the  psychical  miracles,  the  gifts  of  prophecy  and  of  tongues,  de- 
moniac possessions,  and  angelic  ministry,  379. 


$g6  Index  of  Subjects. 


ECLECTICISM   IN   SOCIOLOGY. 

The  social  sciences  as  mere  biblical  and  ecclesiastical  topics.  Civilians  and 
divines  who  have  contributed  to  the  theistic  argument,  380,  381.  Legitimists  who 
have  based  divine  right  upon  Scripture :  historians  who  have  referred  universal 
history  to  providential  economies :  statesmen  and  churchmen  who  have  advocated 
the  moral  corruptibility  of  society,  381,  382.  Civilians  and  divines,  who  have  ad- 
vocated free  principles,  the  progress  of  society,  under  natural  laws,  in  virtue  and  re- 
ligion, and  the  probability  of  a  future  perfected  Christian  State,  383.  Scientific 
verification  of  such  miracles  as  the  Temptation  of  Adam  and  of  Christ,  th^conflict 
of  humanity  with  evil  angels,  the  sympatliy  of  good  angels,  and  their  appearance  in 
the  judgment  of  the  world,  383-384. 

ECLECTICISM  IN  THEOLOGY. 
The  natural,  metaphysical  and  comparative  theologies  as  blended  with  the  re- 
vealed. Divines  and  deists  who  hold  opposite  views  as  to  the  origin,  development 
and  destiny  of  the  Christian  religion,  385,  386.  Monism  and  dualism,  creationism 
and  evolutionism,  pessimism  and  optimism,  as  maintained  by  recent  religious 
thinkers,  386-388. 

ECLECTIC    RELIGIOUS    PHILOSOPHY. 

Mystical  philosophers  who  have  prematurely  sought  to  harmonize  reason  and 
revelation.  Idealists  and  realists,  absolutists  and  positivists  who  are  endeavoring  to 
reconcile  religion  and  science,  388-390.  Various  popular  attempts  of  an  apologetic 
nature,  390-392. 

CRUDE   RELIGIOUS   CULTURE. 

Revival  of  mediaeval  forms  of  Christian  culture.  Attempted  re-consecration  of 
literature,  of  art,  of  politics,  and  of  religion,  392-396. 

Refutation  of  the  opinion  that  science  and  religion  are  fully  and  immediately  re- 
concilable in  their  present  stage  of  development :  such  eclecticism  is  specious  and 
partial,  illogical  and  unscientific,  narrow  and  premature,  and  practically  vague  and 
visionary,  396-398. 

CHAPTER  V. 

MODERN   SCEPTICISM   BETWEEN   SCIENCE  AND   RELIGION. 

Definition  of  the  party  of  despondents  or  sceptics,  both  scientific  and  religious, 
and  examples  of  their  disparaging  estimate  of  the  revealed  portions  of  knowledge  in 
the  different  sciences,  in  philosophy,  and  in  civilization,  399-431. 

SCEPTICISM  IN  ASTRONOMY. 
Writers  who  have  expressed  sceptical  doubts  as  to  the  theistic  argument  of  astro- 
nomy, and  as  to  the  moral  design  of  the  heavenly  worlds,  403,  404.     Rationalistic 
critics  who  have  explained  away  the  astronomical  miracles,  the  Stoppage  of  the  Sun, 
the  Star  in  the  East,  and  the  Final  Conflagration,  404,  405. 

SCEPTICISM   IN  GEOLOGY. 

Sceptical  objections  to  the  religious  lessons  of  terrestrial  physics,  and  to  the  ac- 
cordance of  geology  with  Genesis,  406.  Rationalistic  explanations  of  various  geolo- 
gical miracles  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments — the  Deluge,  the  Destruction  of 
Sodom  and  Gomorrah,  Stilling  of  the  Tempest,  the  prodigies  at  tlie  Crucifixion,  etc., 
407. 


Index  of  Subjects.  597 


SCEPTICISM  IN  ANTHROPOLOGY.". 
Doubts  as  to  the  teleological  argument  in  animate  nature,  and  as  to  the  proof  of 
the  divine  benevolence,  408.  Rationalists  who  have  disparaged  the  Hteral  story  of 
the  creation  and  fall  of  Adam.  409.  Naturalistic  explanations  of  various  miracles, 
such  as  the  confusion  of  tongues  at  Babel,  the  fusion  at  Pentecost,  the  incarnation, 
transfiguration  and  ascension  of  Christ,  409,  410, 

SCEPTICISM   IN   PSYCHOLOGY 

Writers  who  have  depreciated  the  theistic  proofs  of  the  mental  sciences,  411. 
Modern  divines  who  have  disparaged  the  traditional  doctrines  of  grace,  412.  Ra- 
tionalistic explanations  of  the  psychical  miracles,  of  inspiration,  conversion,  angelic 
visitation,  412,  413. 

SCEPTICISM   IN   SOCIOLOGY. 

Difficulties  of  the  theistic  argument  in  the  social  sciences  and  in  history,  413,  414. 

Rationalistic  re-statements  of  the  doctrine  of  the  church,  414.     Scientific  scepticism 

as  to  the  political  miracles  of  famine,  war,  Satanic  influence,  the  Final  Judgment, 

415- 

SCEPTICISM   IN   THEOLOGY. 

Disparaging  criticism  of  all  the  traditional  theistic  arguments,  and  new  difficulties 
in  comparative  theolog)',  415,  416.  Modern  divines  who  have  speculated  away  the 
peculiar  doctrines  of  revealed  theology,  416,  417.  Rationalistic,  Naturalistic,  and 
Mythological  critics  who  have  deprived  Christianity  of  its  miraculous  insignia,  417, 
418. 

SCEPTICAL    RELIGIOUS    PHILOSOPHY. 

Religious  sceptics  who  have  been  ready  to  abandon  reason  for  the  sake  of  revela- 
tion, or  revelation  for  the  sake  of  reason,  418-420.  Various  popular  writers  who 
favor  such  scepticism,  420-422.     Dispiriting  effects  of  such  scepticism,  422-423. 

EFFETE  RELIGIOUS  CULTURE. 

Supposed  signs  of  decay  in  modern  civilization :  despair  of  any  regeneration  of 
literature,  or  of  art,  or  of  politics,  or  of  religion,  423-426. 

Concluding  argument  from  the  previous  survey :  Refutation  of  the  opinion 
that  science  or  religion  are  essentially  contradictory  and  wholly  irreconcilable  at  any 
future  stage  of  development:  such  scepticism  is  weak  and  ignoble,  narrow  and  un- 
founded :  it  overlooks  past  progress  and  mistakes  the  present  social  exigency :  the 
more  hopeful  view  is  in  keeping  with  the  analogies  of  prophecy  and  of  history,  with 
the  organism  of  society  and  with  the  interests  of  religion  and  science,  426-433. 


PART   II.— THE    PHILOSOPHICAL   THEORY   OF  THE   HAR- 
MONY OF  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 
CHAPTER  I. 

THE  UMPIRAGE  OF   PHILOSOPHY  BETWEEN  SCIENCE  AND   RELIGION. 

The  need  of  some  logical  conciliation  as  inferred  from  a  survey  of  the  scientific 
hypotheses  and  religious  dogmas  which  are  pitted  against  each  other  in  the  different 
sciences,  and  the  province  of  philosophy  in  regard  to  such  unsolved  problems,  435- 
474- 


598  Index  of  Subjects. 


UNSOLVED  PROBLEMS   IN   THE   PHYSICAL  SCIENCES. 

In  astronomy,  the  hypothesis  of  primitive  evolution  of  nebulae  and  the  dogma  of 
instantaneous  creation  of  the  heavens :  plurality  of  worlds  and  hierarchy  of  angels : 
ultimate  dissolution  of  planets  and  miraculous  renewal  of  the  heavens,  439-442.  In 
geology,  secular  formation  of  strata  and  successive  creations :  refrigeration  of  the 
globe  and  miraculous  renewal  by  fire :  periodic  changes  of  climate  and  species  and 
judgments  of  the  deluge  and  conflagration,  442-444.  In  anthropology,  develop- 
ment of  animal  into  human  species  and  creation  of  Adam  in  the  divine  image ;  gra- 
dual rise  of  races,  languages  and  arts,  and  the  miraculous  confusion  and  dispersion 
at  Babel :  physical  decline  of  the  future  human  race  and  predicted  renewal  of  man 
with  the  earth,  444-447. 

UNSOLVED   PROBLEMS   IN   THE  PSYCHICAL  SCIENCES. 

In  psychology,  sociology  and  theology, — the  production  and  dissolution  of  mind 
and  the  creation  and  regeneration  of  the  soul:  natural  growth  and  decay  of  socie- 
ties and  supernatural  career  of  the  Church  :  evolution  of  natural  religions  and  pre- 
dicted triumph  of  revealed  religion,  448,  449.  In  the  metaphysical  sciences, — phe- 
nomenal nature  of  mind  and  matter,  and  pre-ordained  harmony  of  soul  and  body : 
evolution  of  the  absolute  reason  or  will  and  creation  by  the  Father  through  the  Son : 
abolition  of  theology  by  science  and  rectification  of  science  by  revelation :  ultimate 
nescience  and  the  beatific  vision  and  new  apocalypse,  449,  450.  Such  problems  are 
neither  exclusively  scientific  nor  exclusively  religious,  but  strictly  philosophical  ques- 
tions, 451,  452.  Extension  of  Professor  Tyndall's  illustration  of  the  psychical  class 
of  problems:  renewed  argument  of  Bishop  Butler:  rejoinder  of  a  Lucretian:  Lord 
Bacon  as  Umpire,  453-460. 

Definition  of  philosophy  as  the  only  accepted,  available  and  desirable  umpire  be- 
tween science  and  religion,  461-465.  Aim  and  goal  of  philosophy  in  the  great  re- 
conciliation, 466.  The  true  philosophical  spirit  neither  intrudes  into  science  nor  into 
religion,  mediates  by  no  visible  authority,  and  is  itself  only  recruited  from  the  ranks 
of  science  and  religion,  467,  468. 

Refutation  of  objections, — that  the  philosopher  himself  must  be  a  somewhat  pre- 
judiced judge ;  that  the  scientist  or  religionist  is  competent  to  draw  his  own  infer- 
ences :  that  either  can  do  the  work  of  the  philosopher :  that  the  supposed  reconci- 
liation is  fallible  and  impracticable  :  Qualifications  and  issues  of  the  great  umpirage, 
468-474. 

CHAPTER  II. 

THE  POSITIVE  PHILOSOPHY   OR   THEORY  OF   NESCIENCE. 

The  fhree  philosophical  theories  and  systems  of  science  and  religion.  •  The  Posi- 
tive philosophy,  as  held  by  its  leading  advocates,  would  ignore  a  divine  revelation, 
and  with  it  the  whole  superstructure  of  the  theological  and  metaphysical  sciences. 
Not  to  be  refuted  on  theological  nor  on  metaphysical  grounds,  but  upon  its  own 
premises,  475-478.  Its  distinctive  feature  is  its  supposed  law  of  a  historical  evolu- 
tion of  the  sciences:  preliminary  objection  that  such  a  law,  if  it  exist,  must  be  sub- 
ordinate to  other  and  higher  social  laws,  479,  480. 

Statement  of  the  law  of  triple  evolution — the  theological  stage  of  human  know- 
ledge ;  the  metaphysical  stage  ;  the  positive,  or  strictly  scientific  stage,  480-484. 

No  empirical  proof  of  such  a  law  either  in  the  experience  of  the  individual  or  of 
the  race.  Neither  theology  nor  metaphysics  on  the  decline  in  modern  history.  The 
supposed  law  does   not  hold   outside  of  Christian  nations,  nor  in   the  psychical 


Index  of  Siibjects.  599 

sciences,  nor  even  in  the  few  physical  sciences,  to  which  Comte  would  limit  our 
knowledge.  Astronomy  and  terrestrial  physics  are  still  practically  pervaded  by  the 
theological  and  the  metaphysical  spirit.  The  three  alleged  stages  are  found 
actually  co-existing  at  the  present  day  in  the  foremost  nations  and  in  the  most  ad- 
vanced sciences,  484-491 

No  rational  proof  of  such  a  law  in  the  intellectual  or  moral  constitution.  The 
positive  tendency  to  refer  phenomena  to  laws  is  not  incompatible  with  the  theologi- 
cal tendency  to  refer  them  also  to  God  as  their  cause.  On  the  contrary,  laws 
require  a  lawgiver.  Logical  consistency  of  astronomy  and  of  social  science  with 
theology.  Every  advance  of  positive  science  only  increases  its  rational  need  of  the- 
ology, 482-495.  No  moral  antagonism  of  the  two  tendencies :  the  religious  senti- 
ments could  never  be  supplanted  by  positive  science,  but  are  only  invigorated  by  it : 
even  in  the  moral  world  an  absolute  reign  of  law  would  not  extinguish  either  the 
need  or  instinct  of  prayer,  495-497.  No  social  antagonism  of  the  two  tendencies: 
theological  opinions  must  ever  constitute  the  practical  basis  of  social  order,  498. 
The  same  reasoning  applicable  to  the  metaphysical  spirit,  499. 

Positivism  a  self-refuting  theory.  It  is  a  lesson  to  the  metaphysician  that  no  one 
method  of  inquiry  can  be  exclusively  pursued ;  and  to  the  theologian,  that  the  idea 
of  a  God  is  intellectually  as  well  as  morally  indispensable,  500-502. 

CHAPTER  III. 

THE  ABSOLUTE  PHILOSOPHY  OR  THEORY  OF  OMNISCIENCE. 

Its  claims  as  estimated  by  German,  Enghsh  and  French  philosophers.  Singular 
position  of  religious  thinkers  with  regard  to  it,  503,  504.  The  five  problems  of  the 
Absolute,  which  are  of  fundamental  importance  in  both  science  and  religion,  505. 

Is  the  Absolute  conceivable?  Refutation  of  the  opinion  that,  though  credible,  it 
is  inconceivable.  Such  a  view  destructive  of  faith  as  well  as  thought.  Different 
senses  of  the  inconceivable.  The  Absolute,  while  surpassing  thought,  does  not  ex- 
tinguish it  in  contradictions.  Perfect  logical  consistency  of  the  conception  of  an  In- 
finite and  Absolute  Spirit  as  the  creator  of  the  universe,  505-513. 

Is  the  Absolute  credible?  Refutation  of  the  opinion  that,  though  conceivable,  it 
is  incredible  as  an  objective  reality :  its  credibility  based  upon  its  conceivability  as 
an  instinctive  conviction,  which  is  indestructible  and  cumulative  in  all  religions  :  the 
belief  in  an  Absolute  God  both  morally  and  intellectually  necessary,  513-516. 

Is  the  Absolute  cognizable  ?  Vain  distinction  between  a  speculative  and  a  regu- 
lative knowledge  of  the  Absolute  :  the  cognizable  as  distinguished  from  the  com- 
prehensible :  true  as  distinguished  from  false  anthropomorphism :  the  logical 
basis,  the  certitude,  and  the  scientific  importance  of  the  cognition  of  the  Absolute 
Jehovah  as  an  intelligent  and  intelligible  cause  of  the  universe,  516-522. 

Is  the  Absolute  revealable  ?  Inconsistent  forms  of  rationahsm  :  the  only  consist- 
ent rationalism  :  the  Absolute  Mind,  being  cognitive  as  well  as  cognizable,  may  be 
also  revealed:  the  necessity  and  the  capacity  in  human  reason  for  a  divine  revela- 
tion :  the  adaptation  of  the  Christian  revelation  to  human  reason,  522-526. 

Is  the  Absolute  demonstrable  ?  Inconsistent  forms  of  dogmatism  :  the  only  con- 
sistent dogmatism :  the  Absolute  Reason,  having  been  revealed,  may  also  be  de- 
monstrated :  the  need  and  the  fitness  in  divine  revelation  for  such  a  human  demon- 
stration:  the  fact  and  progress  of  such  a  demonstration:  importance  of  a  demon- 
strated revelation  both  to  religion  and  to  science,  526-529. 

The  truth  and  the  ^rror  of  Absolutism  :  intellectual  need  of  a  divine  revelation  for 
the  completion  of  philosophy  as  seen  in  the  extreme  results  of  modern  thought,  530- 
533- 


6oo  Index  of  Subjects. 


CHAPTER    IV. 

THE   FINAL   PHILOSOPHY   OR   THEORY   OF   PERFECTIBLE  SCIENCE. 

The  emerging  problem  of  a  logical  conciliation  of  the  Positive  and  the  Absolute 
philosophies  in  a  fiual  philosophy  which  shall  proceed  upon  the  concurrence  of  rea- 
son and  revelation,  and  render  human  science  progressively  harmonious  with  divine 
omniscience  :  present  position  of  the  two  philosophies  and  of  religious  thinkers  in 
regard  to  them,  534-538. 

Careful  definition  of  Absolutism  and  Positivism :  their  contrasted  objects,  methods 
and  results,  539-545. 

Arguments  for  their  conciliation  in  a  final  philosophy :  ist.  Their  deep  roots  and 
long  growth  in  the  history  of  civiHzation,  especially  in  religion  and  in  science,  545- 
548.  2d.  Their  logical  combination  fitted  to  accompHsh  the  mission  of  philosophy 
by  yielding  the  method,  the  theory  and  the  system  of  perfect  knowledge,  548-551. 
3d.  Their  combination  in  such  a  final  philosophy  is  already  imminent  and  practica- 
ble: its  prevailing  spirit  may  be  forecast  as  at  once  catholic  and  eclectic,  intelligent 
and  devout,  scientific  and  religious:  its  issuing  system  already  exhibits  a  growing 
harmony  of  the  rational  and  revealed  bodies  of  knowledge  in  astronomy,  geology, 
anthropology,  in  psychology,  sociology  and  theology,  and  in  the  metaphysical  and 
philosophical  sciences,  551-559. 

Statement  of  the  problems  of  the  final  philosophy  :  their  moral  value  and  grand- 
eur, 559-561. 

CHAPTER   V. 

PHILOSOPHIA  ULTIMA  OR   PROJECT   OF   THE   PERFECTED   SCIENCES   AND  ARTS. 

Definition  of  the  Ultimate  Philosophy  as  a  science  of  the  sciences,  derived  scienti- 
cally  from  their  own  historical  and  logical  development,  561-563. 

Its  construction  as  involving  an  expurgation,  and  a  survey  of  the  sciences,  and  a 
theory  of  scientific  knowledge  embracing  all  the  scientific  phenomena  of  the  race 
and  including  both  revelation  and  reason  as  legitimate  factors  of  knowledge,  564- 
566.  Its  application  by  means  of  an  organon  or  logic  of  the  different  sciences,  the 
empirical,  the  metaphysical  and  the  strictly  philosophical,  the  latter  embracing  rules 
for  correlating  reason  and  revelation  in  all  the  sciences,  566-568.  Its  consummation 
in  an  ultimate  system  of  the  sciences,  of  the  arts,  and  of  human  society  in  all  its  ce- 
lestial and  terrestrial  connections,  568-571. 

The  present  age  as  the  time,  the  Western  hemisphere  as  the  scene,  and  the  aca- 
demic system  as  the  means  for  inaugurating  such  a  project  of  perfectible  sciences  and 
arts,  571-578. 

A  scheme  of  academic  studies  based  upon  the  foregoing  project  and  arranged  with 
reference  to  the  present  and  prospective  state  of  the  sciences  :  Educational  questions 
connected  with  such  a  scheme,  578-585. 

Certainty  and  grandeur  of  the  ultimate  philosophy,  586-588. 


INDEX  OF  AUTHORS 


AATHOSE      OPINIONS      HAVE      BEEN      CITED. 


Abano,  or  D'Apano,  39,  332. 

Abelard,  38,  174. 

Achillini,  69,  142. 

Ackerman,  249. 

Acosta,  160. 

Adams,  J.  Q.,  210. 

Adelung,  142,  153,  162. 

Agassiz,  68,  122,  150,  157,  272,  353,  356. 

Agrippa  of  Nettesheim,  45. 

Akenside,  364. 

Albertus  Magnus,  37,  39,  133,  138. 

Albo,  142. 

Aldrovandus,  142. 

Alembert,  D",  48,  62,  283,  296. 

Alexander,  Archibald,  369. 

Alexander  of  Hales,  37,  171. 

Alexander,  J.  Addison,  232. 

Alexander,  j.  W.,  371. 

Alexander,  Stephen,  109,  136. 

Alger,  196. 

Alliacus,  or  D'Ailly,  133. 

Almaric,  or  Amaurice,  39,  41,  296. 

Alphonzo  of  Castile,  403. 

Amberley,  385. 

Ambrose,  34,  113,  135,  174. 

Ammonius  Saccas.  32. 

Ammon,  Christoph.  Von,  251,  409. 

Anaxagoras,  30. 

Anselm  of  Canterbury',  36,  174. 

Anthony  of  Egypt,  35. 

Aquinas,  St.  Thomas,  37,  39,  112,  114, 

174,  200,  201,  202. 
Arngo,  105,  109. 
Arduino,  120. 

Arg)'ll,  Duke  of,  95,  152,  370. 
Aristarchus,  30. 
Aristophanes,  29,  135. 
Arminius,   189. 
Armstead,  162. 
Arnaud,  73,  174. 
Amobius,  195. 
Arnold  of  Brescia,  205. 
JfT        Arnold,  Gottfried,  232. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  399,  421,  423. 
4-A 


Athanasius,  33,  137,  171. 
Aubigne,  D',  29. 
Audoeus,  171. 

Augustine,  33,  35,  112, 113, 116,  137, 171, 
174,  200,  201,  215, 


Babbage,  Charles,  130,  339. 

Bachman,  154. 

Bacon,  Francis,  178,  217,  225,  282,  294, 

295,  301,  309,  320,  324,  413. 
Bacon,  Roger,  41,  133,  249,  253,  282. 
Bagehot,  220. 
Bahnsen,  188,  277,  294. 
Bailey,  Philip,  331. 
Bain,  Alexander,  197. 
Balbo,  Caesar,  382 
Baldisari,  120. 
Balfour,  336,  371. 
Balguy,  364. 
Ballenstedt,  58. 
Balmez,  29,  382. 
Bahzer,  J.  B.,  327. 
Barclay,  Wm.,  208. 
Barnard,  390. 
Barnes,  Albert,  334. 
Barnabas,  31. 
Baronius,  117,  231. 
Barot,  217. 
Barker,  184. 
Bartholmess,  56,  337. 
Bascom,  390. 

Basil,  33,  34,  113,  116, 135,  202. 
Bastian,  271. 
Baumgarten,  179. 
Bauer,  Frederick  C,  244,  239. 
Baur,  Bruno,  244,  404. 
Baxter,  Andrew,  288. 
Bayle,  46,  48. 
Beale,  Lionel,  267. 
Beale,  Samuel,  238. 
Beaumont,  Elie  de,  125. 
Bede,  the  Venerable,  136, 
Beecher,  Edward,  365. 

601 


6o2 


Index  of  Authors. 


Beecher,  Lyman,  191,  368. 

Bell,  Sir  Charles,  352. 

Bellarmin,  43,  59,  78,  189,  207,  230. 

Bellows,  Henry,  390,  412. 

Bembo,  69. 

Beneke,  188,  289. 

Bentley,  Richard,  104,  324. 

Berenger,  141. 

Bergier,  74. 

Berkeley,  85,  132,  134, 169,  182, 199,  270, 

30s.  346- 
Bernard  of  Clairvaulx,  37. 
Bernuzzi,  345. 
Berthez,  267. 
Bessel,  404. 
Beza,  174,  200. 
Bickersteth,  247. 
Bixby,  391. 
Blanc,  Louis,  211. 
Blasche,  83,  196. 
Bleek,  163. 
Bledsoe,  191. 
Blount,  Sir  Charles,  242. 
Blumenbach,  142,  150,  153. 
Boccaccio,  118,241. 
Bochart,  356. 
Bode,  328. 
Bodin,  205,  216. 
Boehme,  89,  245,  388. 
Bold,  183. 

Bolingbroke,  48,  57,  81. 
Bonald,  De,  59,  79,  382. 
Bonar,  247. 

Bonaventura,  37,  201,  203, 
Boniface  of  Germany,  43. 
Bonnet,  Charles,  183. 
Bopp,  143. 
Boscovich,  267. 
Bossuett,  59,  79,  208,  418. 
Boucher  de  Perthes,  147. 
Boudinot,  Elias,  358. 
Boullanger,  215. 
Boyle,  Robert,  295. 
Brandes,  120. 
Bray,  66. 

Bretschneider,  58. 
Brewster,  Sir  David,  331, 
Brissot,  211. 
Brocchi,  164. 
Brogniart,  120. 
Brown,  J.  C,  355. 
Brown,  Mellor,  65. 
Brucker,  29. 

Bruno,  42,  47,  57,  66,  81. 
Bryant,  358. 

Biichner,  67,  71,  161,  197,  269,  241. 
Buchez,  250,  272,  383. 
Buckland,  140,  338. 
Buckle,  76,  157. 
Buchanan,  George,  208. 
Buddeus,  333. 

Buffon,  62,  123,  142,  156,  267,  296,  408. 
Bunscn,  the  Chevalier,  143, 155, 162,  166, 

359,  382,  423. 
Bunsen,  Ernest  von,  239. 
Burnet,  Thomas,  64,  347. 


Burnouf,  Emile,  252. 

Bush,  George,  356,  376. 

Butler,  Joseph,  169,   194,  199,  218,  227, 

235,  237.  250,  305,  331,  381. 
Byron,  276. 


Cabanis,  184. 

Cabell,  154. 

Cabet,  225. 

Caccini,  59. 

Calderwood,  Henry,  298, 

Calderwood,  David,  231. 

Calybaus,  268. 

Calvin,  60,  iii,  113,  117,  118,  136,  138, 

169,  171,  174,  200,  332,  334. 
Campbell,  poet,  364. 
Campanella,  42,  56,  76,  225. 
Carey,  Henry,  163. 
Cardan,  61,  249. 
Carlyle,  212,  423. 
Carpenter,  154,369,  379. 
Carriere,  268. 
Cartwright,  229. 
Gasman,  89. 
Catcott,  348. 
Celsus,  32,  241. 
Chadbourne,  285. 
Chalmers,  9,  134,  140,  230,  330,  336,  343, 

364.  381. 
Chambers,    author   of  ''Vestiges,"  144, 

326. 
Champeaux,  William  of,  38. 
Champollion,  151. 
Chapin,  336. 
Chapman,  237. 
Charles  II.  of  England,  208. 
Charpentier,  122. 
Charron,  87. 
Chateaubriand,  79. 
Child,  Chaplin,  340. 
Christlieb,  390. 
Christol,  143. 

Chrysostom,  33,  34,  135,  171,  173,  207. 
Chubb,  70,  82. 
Cicero,  103,  209. 
Clairvault,  100. 
Clarke,  Samuel,  73,  85,  369. 
Clark,  Henry  J.,  352. 
Clark,  J.  Freeman,  243,  256. 
Clayton,  134. 
Clement  of  Alexandria,  33,  41,  112,  116, 

171,  200,  236. 
Clement  of  Rome,  31. 
Clifford,  370. 
Climaque,  St.  John,  215. 
Clootz,  Anacharsis,  83. 
Cobbe,  Frances,  257,  420, 
Cocceius,  247. 
Cocker,  B.  F.,  385. 
Colenzo,  42. 

Coleridge,  361,  415,  420. 
Collier,  73,  285. 
Colonna,  121. 
Colwel,  232. 
Collins,  Anthony,  70,  183,  187,  196. 


Index  of  Authors. 


603 


Combe,  George,  361. 

Comte,  Auguste,  58,  m,  219,  228,  283, 

476-500. 
Condorcet,  'jt,  218,  226,  309. 
Condillac,  48, 183. 
Considerant,  225. 
Conybeare,  140,  237. 
Copernicus,  43,  100,  iii. 
Cordier,  128. 

Cosmas  Indicopleustes,  35. 
Cousin,  29,  212,  213,  300. 
Coward,  70,  196. 
Crawfurd,  157. 
Creuzer,  243. 
Cremoninus,  69. 
Croll,  131. 
Croft,  Herbert,  134. 
Crosby,  Chancellor,  390. 
Crusius,  189,  235. 

Cudworth,  72,  84,  189,  238,  367,  369. 
Cumberland,  210. 
Cumming,  80,  248,  349. 
Cuvier,    120,   122,    125,    153,    156,    296, 

347- 
Cyprian,  33. 

Cyrill  of  Alexandria,  33. 
Cyrill  of  Jerusalem,  33. 


Duns  Scotus,  37,  i38. 
Dupaix,  160. 
Dupuis,  242. 
Durant  of  Clermont,  41. 


Eberhard,  157. 

Ebrard,  345. 

Edkins,  360. 

Edwards,  Jonathan,  113,  187,  199,  246, 

368,  370. 
Eichorn,  407. 
Elam,  369. 

Emerson,  R.  W.,  212,  389. 
Emmons,  Nathaniel,  368. 
Epicurus,  182,  195. 
Epinois,  De  1',  59. 
Epiphanius,  215. 
Erasmus,  45,  189,  241. 
Erdmann,  29. 
Erigena,  John  Scotus,  36,  38,  41,   171. 

174,  269. 
Ernesti,  417. 
Escobar,  189. 
Euripides,  30. 
Eusebius,  31,  33. 
Eustachius,  142. 


Dabney,  389. 

Dalton,  267. 

Daniell,  123. 

Dante,  37,  114. 

Daubeny,  122,  128. 

Davis,  Sir  John,  180. 

Davy,  Sir  Humphrey,  105.  125,  128. 

Dawson,  121,  151,  176,  339.  345.  39i- 

Darwin,  Erasmus,  187. 

Darwin,  Charles,  146,  161,  167. 

De  Candolle,  157. 

De  la  Rive,  123. 

Delitzsch,  68,  341,  354,  366. 

De  Luc,  64,  344. 

Demarest,  120. 

Democritus,  loi,  182. 

De  Morgan,  61. 

Derham,  235,  325. 

Descartes,  47,  loi,  178,  192,  235,  282. 

De  Wette,  244,  369,412. 

De  Serres,  344. 

Dickie,  339. 

Dick,  Thomas,  328. 

Diderot,  48,  62,  82. 

Digby,  180. 

Dinant,  David,  39,  269. 

Dodwell,  367,  375., 

Dbllinger,  383. 

Donati,  120. 

Domer,  80,  240,  331. 

Dove,  Patrick,  218,  383. 

Draper,  29,  56,  229, 

Drayson,  131. 

Drew,  377. 

Dubois,  324. 

Dubois,  Raymond,  184. 

Duncan,  Henry,  340. 


Faber,  358. 

Fabricius,  337. 

Fairbairn,  Patrick,  247. 

Fairbairn,  390. 

Fairholme,  342 

Faraday,  9. 

Farrar,  56. 

Farley,  412. 

Fenelon,  86. 

Ferguson,  James,  151 

Ferrari,  213. 

Ferrier,  219. 

Feuerbach,  71,  83,  245. 

Fechner,  291. 

Felix,  Minucius,  236. 

Ficinus,  72. 

Fichte,  213,  286,  292,  299,  419* 

Fichte,  I.  H.,  194,  268,  275,  365. 

Figuier,  147,  164. 

Filmer,  207. 

Finney,  191,368,  370. 

Fisher,  George  B.,  385,  402. 

Fiske,  John,  476,  510,  532. 

Fitzgerald,  61. 

Fontanelle,  57,  106. 

Forbes,  157. 

Forge,  de  la,  186. 

Forster,  367. 

Foscarinus,  328. 

Fourier,  128,  130. 

B^ourier,  Charles,  218,  219,  223. 

Fowle,  421. 

Fowne,  338. 

Flammarion,  106,  164 

Flacius,  231. 

Flatt,  86. 

Fleming,  134. 


6o4 


Index  of  Authors. 


Flint,  214. 
Fleury,  231. 
Flood,  89,  24S, 
Flourens,  154. 
Florus,  215. 
Fracastoro,  64,  118. 
Frere,  216,  223. 
Frohschammer,  367,  387, 
Fromundus,  59. 
Frothingham,  390,  402, 
Froude,  214. 


Gabler,  417. 
Gale,  90,  237. 
Galen,  156. 

Galileo,  43,  47,  100,  103. 
Gall,  184. 
Galton,  162. 
Gassendi,  183,  199,  295. 
Geikie,  121. 
Generelli,  64,  125. 
Gentilis,  205. 
Gerhard,  116,  200.  ' 
Gerlach,  141. 
Gerson,    229. 
Gesner,  118,  120,  142. 
Geulinx,  73,  368. 
Gibbon,  48,  76,  212. 
Gibson,  Stanley,  421. 
Gieseler,  29. 
Gill,  John,  138. 
Gill,  Wm.  J.,  387. 
Gillet,  402. 
Gioberti,  275. 
Gladstone,  240,  383. 
Glass,  247. 
Glanville,  419. 
Gliddon,  66,  157, 
Glisson,  18I. 
Gobineau,  152. 
Godwin,  Parke,  304. 
Godwin,  William,  76. 
Godwin,  Thomas,  229. 
Goethe,  276. 
Gonzales,  189. 
Goodwin,  426. 
Gcischel,  194,  373. 
Gosse,  J.  P.,  346. 
Gray,  Asa,  168,  176,  436, 
Green,  William  H.,  359. 
Gregg,  223. 

Gregory,  Daniel  S.,  370. 
Gregory  the  Great,  114,  116,  203. 
Gregory  of  Nazianzum,  33,  202. 
Gregory  of  Nyesa,  33,  171,  199. 
Greville,  57. 
Griffin,  349. 
Grimm,  163,  166. 
Grote,  370. 
Grove,  loS,  273. 
Gumpach,  103. 
Guizot,  29. 

Guyot,  121,  122,  217,  272,  327,  344,  345, 
555. 


Haeckel,  66,  146,  278,  305 

Hagenbach,  99. 

Hall,  John  Charles,  154. 

Hallam,  29,  144. 

Halley,  108,  129,  335. 

Halyburton,  236. 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  210. 

Hamilton,   Sir  W.,  180,   288,  302,  505- 

513.  534-539- 
Harrington,  224. 
Harbaugh,  371. 
Harcourt,  358. 
Hardwicke,  238. 
Hartley,  183,  187. 
Hartmann,  84,  191,  277,  293. 
Hase,  99. 
Haven,  369. 
Hazard,  191. 
Heard,  366. 
Heckwelder,  169. 
Hedge,  412. 
Hegel,  213,  273,  300,  276,  283,  286,  293, 

413- 
Hellwald,  220. 
Helmholtz,  108,  336,  408. 
Helmont,  89. 
Helvetius,  48,  70. 
Henderson,  71. 
Hengstenberg,  86,  118,  344. 
Hensel,  60. 
Henslow,  176,  355. 
Herbart,  188,  268,  289. 
Herbert  of  Cherbury,  46,  81,  234,  241. 
Herbinius,  324. 
Herder,  206. 
Hermann,  220. 
Herschell,  Sir  John,  100,  103,  105,  107, 

127,  130. 
Herschell,  Sir   William,    100,   102,   107, 

131- 
Hervas,  169. 
Hesiod,  169. 

Hettinger,  56,  74,  86,  344. 
Heylin,  208,  231. 
Heyn,  195. 
Hierocles,  32. 
Hilaire,  Geoffrey  St.,  145. 
Hills,  367. 
Hill,  339. 
Hinton,  390. 

Hitchcock,  134,  338,  340,  347,  378. 
Hobbes,  46,  70,  76,  81,  179,  186,  210. 
Hockstetter,  165. 
Hodge,  99,  168,  176,  204,  359,  366,  371, 

379- 
Holbach,  D',  48,  71. 
Holberg,  129. 
Hollazius,  126,  200. 
Holsom,  238. 
Holwel,  242. 
Holyoake,  311. 
Hooke,  122,  124, 
Hooker,  145. 
Hopkins,  130,  370. 
Horace,  144. 
Home,  60. 


Lidex  of  Authors. 


605; 


Horsely,  60,  334. 

Howe,  312,  367. 

Hue,  Abbo,  238. 

Hudibras,  62. 

Huet,  418. 

Hugh  of  St.  Victor,  37,   112,  136,  138, 

171,  200,  203. 
Humboldt,  Alexander,  63,  102,  no,  124, 

132,  151,  154,  165. 
Humboldt,  Wilhelm,  143,  151,  154. 
Hume,  48,  70.  82,  179,  212,  250. 
Huxley,  63,  66,  132,  146,  185,  198,  270, 

278,  369. 
Huygens,  104,  328. 


Ignatius,  33,  171. 
Irenseus,  245. 
Irving,  David,  248. 


Jackson,  162. 

Jacobus,  343. 

James  I.  of  England,  208. 

Janet,  180. 

Jansen,  174,  185. 

Jefferson,  Thomas,  210. 

Jevons,  223. 

Jerome,  33,  34,  199,  202. 

Joachim, 245, 

Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  144,  346, 

Johnson,  Samuel,  385. 

Jones,  Bence,  197. 

Jones,  Judge  Joel,  247. 

Jones,  Sir  William,  143,  356. 

Jouffroy,  191,  227. 

Jowett,  409,  412,  421. 

Justin  Martyr,  32,  33,  34,  173,  199,  202, 

207,  236. 
Juvenal,  169. 


Kane,  E.  K.,  165. 

Kane,  T.  L.,  165. 

Kalisch,  406. 

Kant,  102,  179,  181,  191,  193,  218,  283, 

286,  419. 
Kaulich,  387. 
Keble,  John,  372. 
Keerl,  353. 
Keil,  141,  177. 
Keill,  134. 
Keith,  246. 

Kepler,  43,  46,  100,  106. 
Kidd,  338. 

Kingsley,  212,  311,  412. 
Kirby,  352,  361. 
Kirchmaier,  324. 
Kirwan,  64. 
Klaproth,  160. 
Knapp,  86,  118,  141. 
Knox,  254,  312. 
Krause,  299,  390. 
Krauth,  99,  268,  367,  389. 
Krug,  251. 
Kurtz,  177,  329,  330,  336,  341. 


Lacepede,  149. 

Lactantius,  33,  34.  199.  245- 

Lalande,  58. 

Lamarck,  144.  149- 

Lambert,  102. 

Lamont,  104. 

Lanfranc,  36. 

Lange,  56. 

Lange,    F.  A.,   56,  329,   355,   37i.  377, 

379- 
Laplace,  58,  102,  109,  no,  130. 
Lardner,  Dionysius,  105. 
Lardner,  Nathaniel,  305. 
Lassaulx,  223. 
Latham,  154,  166. 
Laud,  79. 
Lawrence,  150. 
Layard,  143. 
Layton,  183. 
Lazarus,  220. 
Leibnitz,   46,    loi,    123,   179,    186,  192, 

274. 
Lechler,  56. 
Lecky,  56. 
Le  Clerc,  356. 
Le  Conte,  390. 
Lehman,  120. 
Leland,  85,  237. 
Leo,  80. 

Leonardo  da  Vinci,  118,  141,  294. 
Lepsius,  143,  162,  166. 
Lerins,  215. 
Leroux,  218,  250,  256. 
Leslie,  J.  Peter,  168. 
Lessing,  jj,  206,  218,  251. 
Lewes,  302,  476. 

Lewis,  Tayler,  118,  239,  327,  355,  391. 
Linnteus,  142,  149,  153. 
Livingston,  143. 

Locke,  179,  186,  210,  244,  270,  301. 
Lombard,   Peter,  36,  114,  136,  138,  200, 

201,  203. 
Lord,  W.  W.,  372. 
Lotze,  188,  219,  268,  289. 
Lowell,  J.  Russell,  393. 
Lowth,  246,  356. 
Lovering,  in. 
Lubbock.  66,  148. 
Lucian,  32. 
Lucretius,  loi,  269. 
Lundy,  John  P.,  385. 
Luther,  60,  in,  117,  174,  184,  198,  373. 
Lyell,  Sir  Charles,  62,  99,  123,  127,  148, 

156,  161,  167. 


Mably,  210. 

McCausland,  357,  359. 

McClatchie,  254. 

McCosh,  289,  339,  364,  381,  391, 

Macdonald,  371. 

McFarlanc,  342. 

Machiavelli,  75,  210,  215,  221,  249. 

Maillet,  66,  144. 

Mainlander,  387. 

Mcintosh,  188. 


6o6 


Lidex  of  Authors. 


Mackay,  402. 

McKnight,  247. 

McNeile,  247. 

Madler,  104. 

Magnen,  182. 

Mahan,  ddc),  385. 

Malebranche,  73,  85,  113,  199,  284. 

Malthus,  167. 

Mamiani,  275. 

Mandeville,  48,  70. 

Manning,  381. 

Mansel,  302,  419. 

Mantel,  123. 

Marheineke,  86,  412, 

Mariana,  207. 

Marsh,  121. 

Marsh,  George  P.,  163. 

Marsigli,  120. 

Martensen,  366,  387. 

Martin,  Theodore,  56,  324. 

Martineau,  269,  387. 

Martyr,  Peter,  136. 

Masson,  538. 

Matter,  29. 

Maudsley,  iii,  165,  184,  198,  270,  369. 

Maupertuis,  296. 

Maurice,  T.  D.,  243,  403,  406,  346. 

Maury,  157. 

Mayer,  no,  273. 

Maxwell,  Clerk,  267,  272. 

Meade,  239. 

Medici,  118. 

Mede,  246,  336. 

Meier,  192. 

Melancthon,  60,  113,  174,  185. 

Melito,  171. 

Mendelssohn,  192. 

Mettrie,  De  la,  71. 

Michaelis,  407. 

Michelet,  Carl,  58,  83. 

Michelet,  M.,  214. 

Michelis,  346. 

Mill,  James,  187. 

Mill,  J.  Stuart,  188,  19B,  228,  297,  476, 

Miller,  Hugh,  152,  344,  345,  353. 

Miller,  John,  375. 

Miller,  Samuel,  382. 

Milton,  IIS,  210,  350,  354,  365,  403. 

Milman,  29. 

Milner,  232. 

Mitchell,  John,  128,  134. 

Mitchel,  Ormsby,  325,  326. 

Mitchel,  S.  Weir,  165. 

Mivart,  St.  George,  355,  392, 

Moffat,  J.  C,  239. 

Moleschott,  71,  197,  269. 

Molloy,  343. 

Mommsen,  155. 

Monboddo,  or  Burnet,  144. 

Mondmus,  141. 

Montaigne,  234,  282,  403. 

Montesquieu,  76,  164,  205,  216. 

More,  Henry,  72,  90,  189,  369. 

More,  Sir  Thomas,  205,  224. 

Morell,  99. 

Morelli,  210,  225. 


Morgan,  Lewis,  242. 

Morgan,  Thomas,  88. 

Moro,  125. 

Muller,  Johannes,  154. 

Miiller,  Julius,  365,  377. 

Miiller,  Max,  132,  151,  162,  166,  252. 

Murphy,  John,  118. 

Murphy,  J.  J.,  387,  390. 


Nagelsbach,  239. 

Naud&,  29,  232, 

Naudin,  164. 

Naville,  390. 

Neal,  231. 

Neander,  29,  232. 

Necker,  150. 

Newman,  Francis,  88,  381. 

Newman,  J.  Henry,  232. 

Newmann,  454. 

Newton,  44,  100,  107,  272,  295,  335, 

Niebuhr,  155. 

Nicol,  325. 

Nipho,  69. 

Nitzsch,  251. 

Nieuwentyt,  324. 

Norris,  285. 

Nott,  66,  157. 

Nye,  229. 


Occam,William  of,  41. 

Ocellus,  215. 

Oersted,  105. 

Oliva,  165. 

Orbigny,  D',  120./ 

Orr,  407. 

Ovid,  169. 

Owen,  John,  60, 173. 

Owen,  Richard,  105,  145,  3S3.'"403. 


Fachomius,  35. 

Paine,  57. 

Paley,  351,  364,  370,  403,  420. 

Palgrave,  388. 

Palissy,  64. 

Palmer,  230,  382. 

Paracelsus,  156,  245,  28a. 

Paravey,  155. 

Parker,  Theodore,  84,  88,  243. 

Parma,  John  of,  245. 

Pascal,  73,  85,  174,  193,  227,  409,  418. 

Patrick,  Bishop,  333. 

Paulus,  407,  499. 

Peabody,  Andrew,  385,  391,  394. 

Pelagius,  174,  188,  261. 

Perrault,  226. 

Penn,  Granville,  64,  342. 

Peyrere,  66,  169. 

Pfannerus,  241. 

Phaff,  107. 

Phillips,  120. 

Phillips,  Wendell,  166. 

Phillipson,  256. 

Philo,  the  Jew,  131,  137, 


Index  of  Authors. 


607 


Pianciani,  345. 

Pickering,  143. 

Pictet,  120,  150. 

Picton,  385. 

Picus  of  Mirandola,  42,  72. 

Pirie,  385. 

Pinkerton,  155. 

Pitt,  416. 

Pitts,  375, 

Plato,  103,  127,  139,  156. 

Playfair,  99. 

Pliny  the  Younger,  32,  122,  128. 

Plutarch,  30,  32. 

Plongeon,  160. 

Poiret,  89,  388. 

Poisson,  no,  131. 

Polignac,  86. 

Poly  carp,  31,  207. 

Pomponatius,  46,  56,  69. 

Poole,  Matthew,  134. 

Poole,  Reginald,  358. 

Pope,  Alexander,  82,  308,  414. 

Popping,  165. 

Porta,  61,  118. 

Porter,  390. 

Postel,  245. 

Pott,  157. 

Pouillet,  130. 

Pouchet,  F.  A.,  99. 

Pouchet,  156. 

Powell,  Baden,- 56,  403,  406,  421. 

Prescott,  155. 

Price,  Richard,  190,  367. 

Prichard,  143,  150,  153,  162. 

Prideaux,  211. 

Priestly,  196,  375. 

"  Primitive  Man,"  Author  of,  357,  360. 

Prochaska,  184. 

Proudhon,  211. 

Prout,  352. 

Puffendorf,  210. 

Pulsky,  157. 

Pusey,  344,  372. 

Quaterfages,  151. 
Quenstedt,  116,  136. 
Quetelet,  218. 
Quinet,  214. 
Quirini,  133. 

Raimond  de  Sebonde,  234. 

Raleigh,  361. 

Ramus,  42,  282. 

Raspe,  125. 

Ranch,  155. 

Rawlinson,  155, 

Ray,  123,  124,  555. 

Raymond,  Lully,  41,  249, 

Reimarus,  88,  193,  295. 

Reinhard,  195. 

Reinseh,  343. 

Reid,  Thomas,  190,  283.  288. 

Regis,  Puna  Sih-ain,  186. 

Remusat,  Abel,  151,  238. 

Remusat,  Charles  de,  375. 


Reuchlin,  45. 

Reusch,  346. 

Ricardo,  167,  223. 

Richard  of  St.  Victor,  37. 

Rigg,  402. 

Ripley,  389. 

Ritter,  120,  555. 

Rohr,  402. 

Robertson,  212. 

Rochefoucauld,  189. 

Rogers,  128,  168,  406. 

Roget,  352. 

Rolleston,  360. 

Romans,  157. 

Rorison,  406. 

Roscelin,  38. 

Rosenmuller,  196. 

Rosmini,  275,  382. 

R6the,  232,  269. 

Rougemont,  Frederick  de,  327,  341. 

Rousseau,  "jj,  193,  211. 

Royer,  147. 

Ruge,  ^^. 


St.  Clair,  355. 

Saintes,  402. 

St.  Hilaire,  (see  Hilaire.) 

St.  Mary,  John,  209. 

St.  Simon,  211,  217,  219,  225,  250,  256. 

Sandeman,  368. 

Savonarola,  174. 

Saussure,  120. 

Schaff,  Philip,  29,  248. 

Schelling,  273,  286,  292. 

Schleicher,  147,  157. 

Schleiden,  63. 

Schleiermacher,  244,  399,  406,  412. 

Schlegel,  Frederick  Von,  29,    143,  166, 

354.  382. 
Schneider,  240. 
Schomberg,  212. 
Scholten,  390. 
Schoolcraft,  155. 
Schopenhauer,  83,  191,  277,  287. 
Schoppius,  59. 

Schubert,  102,  104,  326,  353. 
Scilla,  121. 
Scot,  Reginald,  178. 
Scotus,  (see  Duns,  Erigena). 
Sedgwick,  343. 
Seelye,  389. 
Selborn,  370. 
Semler,  404. 
Seneca,  30,  32. 
Servetus,  47. 
Severian,  34. 
Shairpe,  392. 
Shaafhausen,  146,  163. 
Shaftesbury,  48,  57,  179, 
Shakspeare,  48,  329,  349. 
Shelly,  378. 
Sherlock,  370. 
Shuckford,  211,  246. 
Sidney,  Algernon,  210. 
Simon  of  Tournay,  39. 


6o8 


Index  of  Authors. 


Sirach,  171,  173. 

Sismondi,  29. 

Smalley,  368. 

Smith,  Adam,  206. 

Smith,  Goldwin,  214,  361. 

Smith,  Henry  B.,  390, 

Smith,  Jarmes,  382. 

Smith,  John,  73. 

Smith,  John  Pye,  343,  348,  359. 

Smith,  \Vm.,  120. 

Smith,  Stanhope,  169. 

Smyth,  Piazzi,  151,  358. 

Socinus,  189. 

Socrates,  29. 

Soldani,  120. 

Somerville,  Mrs.,  99,  109,  130. 

Somerset,  Duke  of,  42. 

Southall,  359. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  no,  133,220,229,  273, 

297,  310,  476,  532,  539. 
Spiess,  240. 

Spinoza,  46,  178,  186,  210. 
Sprenger,  255. 
Spurzheim,  184. 
Stahl,  267. 

Stanley,  A.  P.,  370,  437. 
"Stars  and  Angels,"  author  of,  330. 
Stillingfleet,  134,  190. 
Steffens,  409. 
Stone,  419. 
Steinbart,  370. 
Stephen,  Leslie,  402. 
Stephen,  Sir  James,  370. 
Stewart,  Dugald,  191,  288. 
Strabo,  125. 
Stuart,  Moses,  65,  247. 
Suarez,  113,  189,  207. 
Sumner,  Archbishop,  68,  140. 
Sumner,  Charles,  225. 
Swedenborg,  194,  248,  376,  388. 
Swift,  308. 
Sylvester  H..  39. 
Symmes,  129. 


Tacitus,  32. 

Taine,  308. 

Tait.  336,  371. 

Tappan,  190. 

Tauler,  201. 

Taylor,  Henr}',  196. 

Taylor,  Isaac,  376. 

Taylor,  Jeremy,  203,  207,  229. 

Teles!  us,  42,  294. 

Tenneman,  29. 

Tennyson,  373,  374,  409,  412,  457. 

Tertullian,  31,  33,  174, 179,  202,  236, 24S, 

Tholuck,  86,  118,  328. 

Thompson,  Joseph  R.,  167. 

Thomson,  Sir  William,  130,  278. 

Thompson,  poet,  348. 

Tiedeman,  162. 

Tindall,  242. 

Tocqueville,  de,  205. 

Toland,  241. 

Trench,  R.  C,  240,  334. 


Trendelenberg,  538. 

Tracy,  De,  184. 

Tulloch,  385,  392,  402. 

Turgot,  206,  217,  226,  227. 

Turnbull,  190. 

Turrettin,  60,  in,  117,  138,  200. 

Tylor,  157. 

Tyndale,  373. 

Tyndall,  108,  in,  198,  273,  278. 

Ueberweg,  29. 
Ullman,  248. 
Ulrici,  74,  268,  390,  538. 
Usher,  138,  207,  332. 

Valentin,  150. 

Vallisneri,  64,  121,  125. 

Vane,  Sir  Henry,  79. 

Vanini,  42,  47,  249. 

Vayer,  de  la  Mothe,  46,  82. 

Veith,  Emanuel,  342. 

Vesahus,  47,  142. 

Vico,  206,  215,  227,  556. 

Vincent  de  Beauvais,  133,  405. 

Virchow,  305. 

Virgil,  139. 

Virgilius,  Polydore,  43, 

Virey,  165. 

Vogt,  63,  67,  71. 

Volkelt,  275. 

Volney,  77,  164,  242. 

Voltaire,  48,  82,  106,  164. 

Von  Baer,  150. 

Von  Buch,  120. 

Warburton,  85. 

Wace,  Henry,  364. 

Wartz,  152. 

Wagner,  Andrew,  343,  345. 

Wagner,  Rudolph,  74,  194,  371. 

Walckenasr,  216. 

Waldeck,  160. 

Wallace,  Alfred,  145,  161. 

Walworth,  347. 

Warrington,  338,  343. 

Washburn,  390. 

Wayland,  369. 

Webster,  Daniel,  414. 

Weigel,  89. 

Weil,  255. 

Weir,  178. 

Weis,  538. 

Weisse,  194,  268,  331,  373. 

Wegscheider,  419. 

Werner,  120,  121. 

Wessel,  45,  174. 

Wesley,  John,  60,  229. 

Westmeyer,  341. 

Westropp,  148,  152. 

Westminster  Divines,  iii,  113,  175, 

203. 
Wharton,  385. 
Whately,  374. 
Whedon,  191. 
Whewell,  99,  107,  296,  325,  326. 


Index  of  Authors. 


609 


\\niitbv,  191, 336- 

Whiston,  124,  325.  335.  347- 

White,  Andrew,  56,  422, 

Whitefield,  429. 

Whitney,  163. 

Wieseler,  334. 

Wiseman,  343.  372. 

Wilkins,  328,  361. 

Wilkinson,  455. 

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